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diff --git a/78936-0.txt b/78936-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b142968 --- /dev/null +++ b/78936-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,12063 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78936 *** + + + + + THE EIGHTEEN NINETIES + + + + + BOOKS BY HOLBROOK JACKSON + + + ROMANCE AND REALITY + ALL MANNER OF FOLK + PLATITUDES IN THE MAKING + GREAT ENGLISH NOVELISTS + BERNARD SHAW: A MONOGRAPH + WILLIAM MORRIS + SOUTHWARD HO! + + [Illustration: AUBREY BEARDSLEY + + _From the Photograph by Frederick H. Evans_] + + + + + THE + EIGHTEEN NINETIES + + A REVIEW OF ART AND IDEAS AT THE + CLOSE OF THE NINETEENTH + CENTURY + + + BY + HOLBROOK JACKSON + AUTHOR OF “ROMANCE AND REALITY,” ETC. + + + [Illustration] + + + LONDON + GRANT RICHARDS LTD. + MDCCCCXXII + + + + + _First Edition_ _1913_ + _Reprinted_ _1922_ + + + PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY THE RIVERSIDE PRESS LIMITED + EDINBURGH + + + + + TO + MAX BEERBOHM + + [Illustration: Design by Aubrey Beardsley for the Contents + Page of _The Savoy_, Vol. I.] + + + + + CONTENTS + + + PAGE + + INTRODUCTION 13 + + CHAPTER + + I. FIN DE SIÈCLE--1890–1900 17 + + II. PERSONALITIES AND TENDENCIES 33 + + III. THE DECADENCE 55 + + IV. OSCAR WILDE: THE LAST PHASE 72 + + V. AUBREY BEARDSLEY 91 + + VI. THE NEW DANDYISM 105 + + VII. THE INCOMPARABLE MAX 117 + + VIII. SHOCKING AS A FINE ART 126 + + IX. PURPLE PATCHES AND FINE PHRASES 135 + + X. THE DISCOVERY OF THE CELT 147 + + XI. THE MINOR POET 157 + + XII. FRANCIS THOMPSON 166 + + XIII. JOHN DAVIDSON 177 + + XIV. ENTER--G.B.S. 193 + + XV. THE HIGHER DRAMA 205 + + XVI. THE NEW FICTION 216 + + XVII. RUDYARD KIPLING 231 + + XVIII. ART AND LIFE 244 + + XIX. THE REVIVAL OF PRINTING 255 + + XX. BRITISH IMPRESSIONISTS 267 + + XXI. IN BLACK AND WHITE 279 + + INDEX 293 + + [Illustration: + + _Reproduced by kind permission of the proprietors of + “Punch”_ + + Britannia à la Beardsley + + By our “Yellow” Decadent + + (E. T. Reed)] + + + + + LIST OF PLATES + + + Aubrey Beardsley _Frontispiece_ + _From a Photograph by Frederick H. Evans_ + + TO FACE PAGE + + Cover Design of _The Yellow Book_, Volume I 18 + _By Aubrey Beardsley_ + + Cover Design of _The Saturday Review_, Christmas Supplement + (1896) 34 + _By William Rothenstein_ + + Cover Design of _The Savoy_, Volume I 38 + _By Aubrey Beardsley_ + + Oscar Wilde (1895) 72 + + Aubrey Beardsley 92 + _By Max Beerbohm_ + + The Rape of the Lock 98 + _By Aubrey Beardsley_ + + Page Decoration from the _Morte d’Arthur_ 100 + _By Aubrey Beardsley_ + + Tail-piece from _Salomé_ 104 + _By Aubrey Beardsley_ + + “Mr W. B. Yeats introducing Mr George Moore to the + Queen of the Fairies” 120 + _By Max Beerbohm_ + + A. E. Housman 164 + _From a Drawing by William Rothenstein_ + + Francis Thompson (Life Mask, 1905) 166 + + Rudyard Kipling 232 + _By William Nicholson_ + + A Garland for May Day 1895 244 + _By Walter Crane_ + + Page Decoration from the Kelmscott _Coleridge_ 258 + _By William Morris_ + + Page Decoration from John Gray’s _Spiritual Poems_ 262 + _By Charles Ricketts_ + + Frontispiece and Title-Page of _The House of Joy_ 266 + _By Laurence Housman_ + + The Peacock Fan 268 + _By Charles Conder_ + + The Arrival of Prince Charming 274 + _By Charles Conder_ + + A Voluptuary 280 + _By L. Raven Hill_ + + Illustration from _The Faerie Queene_ 282 + _By Walter Crane_ + + Phil May 286 + _By Spy_ + + A Lecture in Store 288 + _By Phil May_ + + The Banks of the Styx 290 + _By S. H. Sime_ + + + + + PREFACE + + +_This new edition of “The Eighteen Nineties” has been revised and +corrected. Here and there notes and sentences have been added for +purposes of clarity. In all other respects it resembles the 1913 +edition. Through the courtesy of the Proprietors of “Punch” it has +been possible to add to the illustrations Mr E. T. Reed’s admirable +caricature, “Britannia à la Beardsley.”_ + + _H. J._ + + LONDON, 1922 + + + + + INTRODUCTION + + +There is little to say by way of introduction to this study, as the +title, I imagine, explains the subject, with the possible exception +that it does not, for reasons of space, indicate that I have reviewed +only certain tendencies in art and ideas in this country. I have had, +of course, to refer, incidentally, to the work of foreign writers +and painters, but only as part of the process of tracing origins and +lines of development. This is said not as excuse but in explanation +of omissions which might otherwise be questioned. The movement which +I have described in the British Islands was, to be sure, but one +phase of a literary and artistic awakening which had its counterparts +in many countries, particularly in France and Germany, and to some +extent in Italy and Russia. Mr Arthur Symons, in the _Symbolist +Movement in Literature_, has given us a valuable interpretation of +one of its important phases in France, and Mr W. G. Blaikie Murdoch, +in _The Renaissance of the Nineties_, has dealt eloquently, but +all too briefly, with certain manifestations of the awakening in +our own country, whilst Mr J. M. Kennedy in _English Literature, +1880–1905_, has made the literary history of the quarter century +he reviews the basis of an argument in defence of the classical as +against the romantic idea. My intention has been to co-ordinate the +various movements of the period, and avoiding sectional or specialised +argument, to interpret them not only in relation to one another, but in +relation to their foreign influences and the main trend of our national +art and life. Thus my aim may be described as interpretative rather +than critical, although criticism is not easily avoided by one who +engages to select examples and instances from a great body of work. + +No excuse need be made by me for confining my review to so limited a +period as the last decade of the nineteenth century, for once having +decided to write about the art and ideas of the closing years of that +century, the final ten years insisted upon definite recognition by +the coincidence of position in time and appropriate happenings in +literature, painting, and other arts and crafts. But, as a matter of +fact, I have not confined myself strictly to a single decade, for it +will be seen that my Nineties trespass upon the adjoining territory of +the Eighties and the Nineteen Hundreds, and, to protect myself as far +as possible against extraneous argument, I have adopted in the initial +chapter the dates “1890–1900” as a kind of symbol for the period. The +compromise is defensible, as I have not wilfully singled out a decade +for review; that decade had singled itself out, the Eighteen Nineties +having already become a distinctive epoch in the minds of those who +concern themselves with art and ideas. + +Anybody who studies the moods and thoughts of the Eighteen Nineties +cannot fail to observe their central characteristic in a widespread +concern for the correct--that is, the most effective, the most +powerful, the most righteous--mode of living. For myself, however, +the awakening of the Nineties does not appear to be the realisation +of a purpose, but the realisation of a possibility. Life aroused +curiosity. People became enthusiastic about the way it should be used. +And in proof of sincerity there were opinionated battles--most of them +inconclusive. But they were not wasteful on that account, for the +very circumstance of idea pitting itself against idea, vision against +vision, mood against mood, and, indeed, whim against whim, cleared the +way for more definite action when the time ripened. It was an epoch of +experiment, with some achievement and some remorse. The former is to +be seen in certain lasting works of art and in the acceptance of new, +and sometimes revolutionary, social ideas; the latter in the repentant +attitude of so many poets and other artists of the time who, after +tasting more life than was good for them, reluctantly sought peace in +an escape from material concerns. The decade began with a dash for +life and ended with a retreat--but not defeat. It was the old battle +between heterodoxy and orthodoxy, materialist and mystic, Christian +and Pagan, but fought from a great variety of positions. Arthur +Symons summed up the situation very effectively in the conclusion to +_Studies in Prose and Verse_, where he discusses the conversion +of Huysmans. “He has realised,” Mr Symons wrote, “the great choice +between the world and something which is not the visible world, but +out of which the visible world has been made, does not lie in the mere +contrast of the subtler and grosser senses. He has come to realise what +the choice really is, and he has chosen. Yet the choice is not quite so +narrow as Barbey D’Aurevilly thought; perhaps it is a choice between +actualising this dream or actualising that dream. In his escape from +the world, one man chooses religion, and seems to find himself; another +choosing love may seem also to find himself; and may not another, +coming to art as to a religion and as to a woman, seem to find himself +not less effectively? The one certainty is that society is the enemy +of man, and that formal art is the enemy of the artist. We shall not +find ourselves in drawing-rooms or in museums. A man who goes through +a day without some fine emotion has wasted his day, whatever he has +gained by it. And it is so easy to go through day after day, busily +and agreeably, without ever really living for a single instant. Art +begins when a man wishes to immortalise the most vivid moment he has +ever lived. Life has already, to one not an artist, become art in that +moment. And the making of one’s life into art is after all the first +duty and privilege of every man. It is to escape from material reality +into whatever form of ecstasy is our own form of spiritual existence.” +There we have the attitude of the Eighteen Nineties from which most +pilgrimages into life began. In the following pages I have endeavoured +to expound the attitude and to indicate its victories and defeats. + +Finally, I have to thank all those who have so willingly given me +their aid by permitting me to quote from their works and to use the +illustrations written and pictorial which add so much to the grace +and value of this book. Particularly I must thank Mr John Lane for +permission to use the following designs by Aubrey Beardsley:--“The Rape +of the Lock,” “Tail-piece from _Salomé_,” and the cover designs +from _The Yellow Book_ and _The Savoy_; Mr William Heinemann, +for the study of Rudyard Kipling from _Twelve Portraits_ +by William Nicholson; Messrs J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., for Aubrey +Beardsley’s page decoration from the _Morte d’Arthur_; Messrs +George Routledge & Sons Ltd., for the frontispiece and title-page +of _The House of Joy_, by Laurence Housman; the proprietors of +_Punch_, for “A Lecture in Store,” by Phil May; the editor of +_Vanity Fair_, for the caricature of Phil May by Spy; the editor +of _The Saturday Review_, for William Rothenstein’s cover design +of the Christmas Supplement, 1896; Mr Walter Crane and Messrs George +Allen & Co. Ltd., for the illustration from the decorated edition of +the _Faerie Queene_; Mr Walter Crane, for the Socialist cartoon, +“A Garland for May Day”; Mr Francis Meynell, for the photograph of +the life mask of Francis Thompson; Mr Raven Hill, for “A Voluptuary,” +from _Pick-me-up_; Mr Charles Ricketts, for the decorated pages +from the Vale Press edition of John Gray’s _Spiritual Poems_; +the executors of William Morris, for the page from the Kelmscott +_Coleridge_; Mr Max Beerbohm, for his caricature of Aubrey +Beardsley and “Mr W. B. Yeats introducing Mr George Moore to the +Queen of the Fairies”; and my friends, Mr Frederick H. Evans, for his +portrait study of Beardsley; Mr William Rothenstein, for his drawing +of A. E. Housman; Mr S. H. Sime, for “The Banks of the Styx”; Mr Grant +Richards, for the “Arrival of Prince Charming,” and “The Peacock Fan,” +by Charles Conder; and Mr Frederick Richardson, for untiring help and +many suggestions during the making of the book in all its stages. + + HOLBROOK JACKSON. + +LONDON, _October, 1913_. + + + + + CHAPTER I + + FIN DE SIÈCLE--1890–1900 + + +In the year 1895 Max Beerbohm announced, how whimsically and how +ironically it is not necessary to consider, that he felt himself a +trifle outmoded. “I belong to the Beardsley period,” he said. The +Eighteen Nineties were then at their meridian; but it was already the +afternoon of the Beardsley period. That very year Aubrey Beardsley’s +strange black and white masses and strong delicate lines disappeared +from _The Yellow Book_, and he only contributed to the first few +numbers of _The Savoy_, which began in 1896. Fatal disease was +overtaking him, and remorse. Aubrey Beardsley actually abandoned his +period in the evening of its brief day, and when he died, in 1898, the +Beardsley period had almost become a memory. But, after all, Aubrey +Beardsley was but an incident of the Eighteen Nineties, and only +relatively a significant incident. He was but one expression of _fin +de siècle_ daring, of a bizarre and often exotic courage, prevalent +at the time and connected but indirectly, and often negatively, with +some of the most vital movements of a decade which was singularly rich +in ideas, personal genius and social will. Aubrey Beardsley crowded +the vision of the period by the peculiarity of his art rather than by +any need there was of that art to make the period complete. He was, +therefore, not a necessity of the Eighteen Nineties, although his +appearance in the decade was inevitable; indeed he was so essentially +_fin de siècle_ that one can say of him with more confidence than +of any other artist of the decade that his appearance at any other time +would have been inopportune. + +The Eighteen Nineties were so tolerant of novelty in art and ideas that +it would seem as though the declining century wished to make amends +for several decades of intellectual and artistic monotony. It may +indeed be something more than coincidence that placed this decade at +the close of a century, and _fin de siècle_ may have been at one +and the same time a swan song and a deathbed repentance. As a matter +of fact, a quickening of life during the last years of a century is +not without parallel. The preceding century closed with the French +Revolution and the First Consulate of Napoleon, and the sixteenth +century closed with the destruction of the Armada and the appearance +of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Spenser, Christopher Marlowe and Francis +Bacon; whilst the close of the fifteenth century saw the Revival of +Learning, and the discovery of America by Columbus and of Newfoundland +by Cabot. One cannot avoid the temptation to speculate on the meaning +of such _fin de siècle_ occurrences, for we are actually made more +conscious of our standing towards time by the approaching demise of +a century, just as we are made conscious of our own ages on birthday +anniversaries and New Year’s Eve. And it is at least thinkable that as +we are certainly moved in the latter circumstances to pull ourselves +together, as it were, even if the effort be only an instinctive attempt +to find in action forgetfulness of the flight of time; so it is equally +thinkable that a similar but racial instinct towards unique activity +may come about at so impressive a period as the close of a century. +But, whatever the cause, the last decade of the last century was, in +spite of its many extravagances, a renascent period, characterised by +much mental activity and a quickening of the imagination, combined with +pride of material prosperity, conquest and imperial expansion, as well +as the desire for social service and a fuller communal and personal +life. + + [Illustration: + + The Yellow Book + An Illustrated Quarterly + + Volume 1 April 1894 + + London: Elkin Mathews & John Lane + Boston: Copeland & Day + + Price + _5_/- + Net + + COVER DESIGN OF _THE YELLOW BOOK_, VOLUME I + + _By Aubrey Beardsley_] + +Max Nordau, the Jeremiah of the period, linked up his famous attack +on what were called “_fin de siècle_ tendencies” with certain +traditional beliefs in the evil destiny of the closure of centuries. +“The disposition of the times is curiously confused,” he said; “a +compound of feverish restlessness and blunted discouragement, of +fearful presage and hang-dog renunciation. The prevalent feeling is +that of imminent perdition and extinction. _Fin de siècle_ is +at once a confession and a complaint. The old northern faith contained +the fearsome doctrine of the Dusk of the Gods. In our days there have +arisen in more highly developed minds vague qualms of the Dusk of the +Nations, in which all suns and all stars are gradually waning, and +mankind with all its institutions and creations is perishing in the +midst of a dying world.” All of which sounds very hectic and hysterical +now, nearly twenty years after it was first written, when many of the +writers and artists he condemned have become harmless classics, and +some almost forgotten. But it is interesting to remember Nordau’s +words, because they are an example of the very liveliness of a period +which was equally lively in making or marring itself. The Eighteen +Nineties, however, were not entirely decadent and hopeless; and even +their decadence was often decadence only in name, for much of the +genius denounced by Max Nordau as degeneration was a sane and healthy +expression of a vitality which, as it is not difficult to show, would +have been better named regeneration. + +At the same time the fact must not be overlooked that much of the +vitality of the period, much even of its effective vitality, was +destructive of ideas and conventions which we had come to look upon +as more or less permanent; and one cannot help feeling, at this +distance, that not a little of _fin de siècle_ attractiveness +was the result of abandonment due to internal chaos. But this is no +cause for condemnation on our part, still less for self-complacency; +for, as we have been told by Friedrich Nietzsche, himself a half-felt +motive force, in this country at least, behind the tendencies of +the times: “Unless you have chaos within you cannot give birth to a +dancing star.” More than one dancing star swam into our ken in the last +decade of the nineteenth century, and the proof of the regenerative +powers of the period are to be found most obviously, but perhaps even +more certainly, if not quite so plainly, in the fact that those who +were most allied with its moods and whims were not only conscious +of the fact, but in some cases capable of looking at themselves and +laughing. _Fin de siècle_ was a pose as well as a fact, a point +not realised by Nordau. John Davidson, among others, was able to smile +at its extravagances, and in _Earl Lavender_, his burlesque novel +of the decadence, one of the characters, a garrulous Cockney dame with +a smattering of French, reveals the existence of power to cast what +Meredith would have called “the oblique ray” upon the doings of the +time. “It’s _fang-de-seeaycle_ that does it, my dear,” says this +lady, “and education, and reading French.” + +It is obvious, then, that people felt they were living amid changes and +struggles, intellectual, social and spiritual, and the interpreters of +the hour--the publicists, journalists and popular purveyors of ideas of +all kinds--did not fail to make a sort of traffic in the spirit of the +times. Anything strange or uncanny, anything which savoured of freak +and perversity, was swiftly labelled _fin de siècle_, and given a +certain topical prominence. The term became a fashion, and writers vied +one with another as to which should apply it most aptly. At least one +writer emphasised the phrase in an attempt to stigmatise it. “Observe,” +wrote Max Beerbohm, “that I write no fool’s prattle about _le fin +de siècle_.” And Max Nordau gives a useful list illustrating the +manner in which the term was used in the country of its birth. A king +who abdicates but retains by agreement certain political rights, which +he afterwards sells to his country to provide means for the liquidation +of debts contracted by play in Paris, is a _fin de siècle_ king. +The police official who removes a piece of the skin of the murderer +Pranzini after execution and has it tanned and made into a cigar-case, +is a _fin de siècle_ official. An American wedding ceremony held +in a gasworks and the subsequent honeymoon in a balloon is a _fin +de siècle_ wedding. A schoolboy who, on passing the gaol where his +father is imprisoned for embezzlement, remarks to a chum: “Look, that’s +the governor’s school,” is a _fin de siècle_ son. These are only a +few from among innumerable examples illustrating the liveliness of the +people of the Nineties to their hour and its characteristics. A further +indication of the way in which the phrase permeated the mind of the +period is found in its frequent occurrence in the books and essays of +the day. It appears fittingly enough in Oscar Wilde’s _The Picture +of Dorian Gray_, that typical book of the period, as a reflection +upon an epigram afterwards used in _A Woman of No Importance_. +Lady Narborough is saying: + + “‘If we women did not love you for your defects, where would you + all be? Not one of you would ever be married. You would be a set + of unfortunate bachelors. Not, however, that that would alter + you much. Nowadays all the married men live like bachelors and + all the bachelors like married men!’ + + “‘_Fin de siècle_,’ murmured Sir Henry. + + “‘_Fin du globe_,’ answered his hostess. + + “‘I wish it were _fin du globe_,’ said Dorian, with a sigh. + ‘Life is a great disappointment.’” + +A reviewer of the novel, in _The Speaker_ of 5th July 1890, +describes Lord Henry Wotton as “an extremely _fin-de-siècle_ +gentleman.” And another book of the period, _Baron Verdigris: A +Romance of the Reversed Direction_, by Jocelyn Quilp, issued in +1894, with a frontispiece by Beardsley, is prefaced by the following +inscription:-- + + _This Book is Dedicated equally to Fin-de-Siècleism, the + Sensational Novel, and the Conventional Drawing-Room Ballad._ + +But side by side with the prevailing use of the phrase, and running +its popularity very close, came the adjective “new”; it was applied +in much the same way to indicate extreme modernity. Like _fin de +siècle_, it hailed from France, and, after its original application +in the phrase _l’art nouveau_ had done considerable service in +this country as a prefix to modern pictures, dresses and designs, +our publicists discovered that other things were equally worthy of +the useful adjective. Grant Allen wrote of “The New Hedonism”; H. +D. Traill, of “The New Fiction,” opening his essay with the words: +“Not to be _new_ is, in these days, to be nothing.” In August +1892 William Sharp designed and produced one number, and one only, of +_The Pagan Review_, which was written entirely by himself under +various pseudonyms, to promote the “New Paganism,” described as “a +potent leaven in the yeast of the ‘younger generation,’ and which +was concerned only with the _new_ presentment of things.” And +again, in the famous attack on _The Picture of Dorian Gray_, in +the _St James’s Gazette_, on the first appearance of the novel +in the pages of _Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine_ for July 1890, +reference is made to “The New Voluptuousness” which “always leads up +to bloodshedding.” Oscar Wilde himself wrote on “The New Remorse,” in +_The Spirit Lamp_, in 1892. The range of the adjective gradually +spread until it embraced the ideas of the whole period, and we find +innumerable references to the “New Spirit,” the “New Humour,” the “New +Realism,” the “New Hedonism,” the “New Drama,” the “New Unionism,” the +“New Party,” and the “New Woman.” The popular, and what we should now +call “significant,” adjective was adopted by publishers of periodicals, +and during the decade there was _The New Age_, a penny weekly with +a humanitarian and radical objective, which, after many vicissitudes +and various editorial changes, still survives; while William Ernest +Henley, coming under the spell of fashion and carrying his modernism +from the eighties, translated _The National Observer_ into _The +New Review_. + +A decade which was so conscious of its own novelty and originality +must have had some characteristics at least which distinguished it +from the immediately preceding decade, if not from all preceding +decades. The former is certainly true: the Eighteen Nineties possessed +characteristics which were at once distinctive and arresting, but I +doubt whether its sense of its own novelty was based in changes which +lacked their counterparts in most of the decades of the nineteenth +century--pre-eminently a century of change. The period was as certainly +a period of decadence as it was a period of renaissance. The decadence +was to be seen in a perverse and finicking glorification of the fine +arts and mere artistic virtuosity on the one hand, and a militant +commercial movement on the other. The one produced _The Yellow +Book_ and the literature and art of “fine shades,” with their +persistent search for the “unique word” and the “brilliant” expression; +the other produced the “Yellow Press,” the boom in “Kaffirs,” the +Jameson Raid, the Boer War and the enthronement of the South African +plutocrat in Park Lane. But this decadent side of the Nineties must +not be looked upon as wholly evil. Its separation from a movement +obviously ascendant in spirit is not altogether admissible. The two +tendencies worked together, and it is only for the sake of historical +analysis that I adopt the method of segregation. Taken thus the +decadence reveals qualities which, even if nothing more than “the soul +of goodness in things evil,” are at times surprisingly excellent. The +decadent vision of an Aubrey Beardsley introduced a new sense of rhythm +into black and white art, just as the, on the whole, trivial masters of +“fine shades,” with their peacock phrases, helped us towards a newer, +more sensitive and more elastic prose form. The “Yellow Press,” with +all its extravagances, was at least alive to the desires of the crowd, +and the reverse of dull in the presentment of its views; and if it +gave Demos the superficial ideas he liked, it was equally prepared to +supply a better article when the demand arose. And, withal, a wider +publicity was given to thought-provoking ideas and imaginative themes, +although adjusted, and often very much adjusted, to the average taste, +than had hitherto been possible. As for the “New Park Lane” and the +“New” aristocracy, they in their garish abandonment helped us to apply +the abstract science of economics to life, thus probably preparing the +path for the Super-tax and other so-called “Socialistic” legislation +of to-day. But apologies for the decadent side of the period do not +complete the story of the renaissance of the Nineties. This latter +was more real than the much-advertised decadence, and as time goes on +it will prove itself to have been more enduring. The atmosphere of +the Eighteen Nineties was alert with new ideas which sought to find +expression in the average national life. If luxury had its art and +its traffic, so had a saner and more balanced social consciousness. If +the one demanded freedom for an individual expression tending towards +degeneration and perversion, the other demanded a freedom which should +give the common man opportunities for the redemption of himself and his +kind. Side by side with the _poseur_ worked the reformer, urged +on by the revolutionist. There were demands for culture and social +redemption. A wave of transcendentalism swept the country, drawing +with it the brighter intelligences of all classes; but it was not +remote, it was of the earth and of the common life and hour, seeking +the immediate regeneration of society by the abolition of such social +evils as poverty and overwork, and the meanness, ugliness, ill-health +and commercial rapacity which characterised so much of modern life. +The vitality of this awakening of the social consciousness is proved +by its extravagances. In the main it worked persistently, cheerfully +and with that spirit of compromise dear to the English temperament, as +can be seen by a reference to the pages of _The Daily Chronicle_, +under the editorship of A. E. Fletcher; _The Star_, under T. +P. O’Connor; _The New Age_ of the period; Robert Blatchford’s +_Clarion_, and W. T. Stead’s _Review of Reviews_. But now and +then the cup of social zeal was too full; it overflowed, and one heard +of the bomb of over-zealous anarchist; of the revolt of righteously +impatient starvelings among the newly awakened proletariat, and of +the purely negative militancy of the “Nonconformist conscience,” +which used the newborn and enthusiastic London County Council and Mrs +Ormiston Chant as the instruments of a moral crusade among West End +music halls, then only just discovered as more or less harmless and +instructive places of entertainment by those guardians of British +respectability--the lower middle classes. + +In all these things the Eighteen Nineties were unique only in method +and in the emphasis they gave to certain circumstances and ideas. The +Eighteen Eighties and the late Seventies had been even more “artistic” +than the Nineties, and the preceding decade had also its riots and +revolutionary organisations. Max Beerbohm, in a delightful essay +which could only have been written in the Nineties and could only have +appeared in _The Yellow Book_, has given us with subtle humour +and satire a little history, not entirely free from caricature, of the +Eighties. In the essay called “1880” he opens, as it were, a window in +the house of the Nineties through which we get a fair glimpse of the +immediate past. He says: + + “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. Dados arose upon every wall, + sunflowers and the feathers of peacocks curved in every corner, + tea grew quite cold while the guests were praising the Willow + Pattern of its cup. A few fashionable women even dressed + themselves in sinuous draperies and unheard-of greens. Into + whatsoever ballroom 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 robed in the + fogs, and bank clerks, versed in the writings of Mr Hawmerton, + 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. + Æstheticism (for so they named the movement) did indeed permeate + in a manner all classes. But it was to the _haut monde_ + that its primary appeal was made. The sacred emblems of + Chelsea were sold in the fashionable toy-shops, its reverently + chanted creeds became the patter of the _boudoirs_. The + old Grosvenor Gallery, that stronghold of the few, was verily + invaded. Never was such a fusion of delighted folk as at its + private views. There was Robert Browning, the philosopher, + doffing his hat with a courtly sweep to more than one duchess. + There, too, was Theo Marzials, poet and eccentric, and Charles + Colnaghi, the hero of a hundred teafights, and young Brookfield, + the comedian, and many another good fellow. My Lord of Dudley, + the virtuoso, came there, leaning for support upon the arm of + his fair young wife. Disraeli, with the lustreless eyes and face + like some seamed Hebraic parchment, came also, and whispered + behind his hand to the faithful Corry. And Walter Sickert spread + the latest _mot_ of ‘the Master,’ who, with monocle, cane + and tilted hat, flashed through the gay mob anon.” + +There is also ample evidence of the social earnestness of the preceding +decade in memories of the dock strike of 1889, which brought John +Burns and Tom Mann to the front as the “new” labour leaders, and of +the riots of 1886, which culminated in a free speech demonstration in +Trafalgar Square on Sunday, 13th November 1887, when the Life Guards +were called out, and during the clearing of the Square a young man +lost his life. The first British Socialist organisation of any note, +the Social Democratic Federation, later called the Social Democratic +Party, and more recently merged in the British Socialist Party, was +formed by Henry Mayers Hyndman, who had for chief supporter William +Morris, in 1881. Two years later the Fabian Society was founded, and +this organisation drew to its ranks the middle-class “intellectuals,” +who were beginning to interest themselves in Socialism. These included +Sidney Webb, Bernard Shaw, Sydney Olivier, Graham Wallas, Annie +Besant, Hubert Bland, Frank Podmore, Stewart Headlam and others who +had made, or were about to make, their mark in various branches of the +intellectual life. It was these various Socialist activities which made +the formation of the Independent Labour Party a possibility in 1892, +and the return of Keir Hardie, its first representative, to Parliament, +in the same year. + +But the chief characteristics of the Eighteen Nineties proper, +although dovetailed into the preceding decade, may be indicated +roughly under three heads. These were the so-called Decadence; the +introduction of a Sense of Fact into literature and art; and the +development of a Transcendental View of Social Life. But again, it +must not be assumed that these characteristics were always separate. +To a very considerable extent they overlapped, even where they were +not necessarily interdependent. Oscar Wilde, for instance, bridged the +chasm between the self-contained individualism of the decadents and +the communal aspirations of the more advanced social revolutionaries. +His essay, _The Soul of Man under Socialism_, has been acclaimed +by recognised upholders of Socialism. And even his earlier æstheticism +(which belonged to the Eighties) was an attempt to apply the idea of +art to mundane affairs. Bernard Shaw, rationalist and anti-romantic +apostle of the sense of fact, openly used art to provoke thought and +to give it a social, as distinct from an individualist, aim; just as +other and more direct literary realists, such as Emile Zola and Henrik +Ibsen, had done before him, either avowedly or by implication. The more +typical realists of the Nineties, George Gissing and George Moore, +seem to be devoid of deliberate social purpose, but the prevalent +didacticism of the period is strikingly pronounced in the work of H. +G. Wells, who has contrived better than any other writer of his time +to introduce reality into his novels without jeopardising romance, to +hammer home a theory of morality without delimiting his art. But apart +from such obvious resemblances between types of _fin de siècle_ +genius, the popular idea of the period looked upon one phase of its +thought as no less characteristic than another. The adjective “new” as +an indicator of popular consciousness of what was happening, was, as we +have seen, applied indifferently to all kinds of human activity, from +art and morals to humour and Trade Unionism. + +There is no clearer example of the intimate relationship between +what might have been called the degenerate notions of the period +and those which are admittedly regenerate, than a comparison of the +Epicurean ideas in such strikingly different works as Oscar Wilde’s +_The Picture of Dorian Gray_ and Grant Allen’s essay on “The New +Hedonism,” which appeared in _The Fortnightly Review_ of March +1894. Oscar Wilde says: + + “Yes: there was to be, as Lord Henry had prophesied, a new + Hedonism that was to recreate life, and to save it from that + harsh, uncomely Puritanism that is having, in our own day, its + curious revival. It was to have its service of the intellect, + certainly; yet it was never to accept any theory or system + that would involve the sacrifice of any mode of passionate + experience. Its aim, indeed, was to be experience itself, and + not the fruits of experience, sweet or bitter as they might be. + Of the asceticism that deadens the senses, as of the vulgar + profligacy that dulls them, it was to know nothing. But it was + to teach man to concentrate himself upon the moments of a life + that is itself but a moment.” + +Here we have a kind of self-culture by the constant variation of +experiences, mostly passionate, with little if any reference to the +rest of humanity. In a sense it is not a new Hedonism at all, but a +Hedonism which had existed from time immemorial, although it found +its way into Oscar Wilde’s novel by the aid of two modern books. One +of these, the _À Rebours_ of Joris Karl Huysmans, may be said to +contain the apotheosis of the _fin de siècle_ spirit; the other, +_The Renaissance_, by Walter Pater, containing a famous passage +which became the precious gospel of the Æsthetic Movement of the +Seventies and Eighties. It was new, however, in so far as it reacted +against the “Nonconformist conscience” of the moment. But that it was +not the only “New” Hedonism may be realised by reference to Grant +Allen’s essay, which is little more than a veiled piece of Socialist +propaganda. The central idea of this sociological Hedonism is shown in +the following extract:-- + + “Self-development, on the contrary, is an aim for all--an + aim which will make all stronger, and saner, and wiser, and + better. To be sound in wind and limb; to be healthy of body + and mind; to be educated, to be emancipated, to be free, to + be beautiful--these things are ends towards which all should + strain, and by attaining which all are happier in themselves, + and more useful to others. That is the central idea of the new + hedonism. We see clearly that it is good for every man among us + that he and every other man should be as tall, as strong, as + well knit, as supple, as wholesome, as effective, as free from + vice or defect as possible. We see clearly that it is his first + duty to make his own muscles, his own organs, his own bodily + functions, as perfect as he can make them, and to transmit + them in like perfection, unspoiled, to his descendants. We see + clearly that it is good for every woman among us that she and + every other woman should be as physically developed and as + finely equipped for her place as mother as it is possible to + make herself. We see that is good for every woman that there + should be such men, and for every man that there should be such + women. We see it is good for every child that it should be born + of such a father and such a mother. We see that to prepare + ourselves for the duties of paternity and maternity, by making + ourselves as vigorous and healthful as we can be, is a duty + we all owe to our children unborn and to one another. We see + that to sacrifice ourselves, and inferentially them, is not a + thing good in itself, but rather a thing to be avoided where + practicable, and only to be recommended in the last resort as an + unsatisfactory means of escape from graver evils. We see that + each man and each woman holds his virility and her femininity in + trust for humanity, and that to play fast and loose with either, + at the bidding of priests or the behest of Puritans, is a bad + thing in itself, and is fraught with danger for the State and + for future generations.” + +The intellectual, imaginative and spiritual activities of the Eighteen +Nineties are concerned mainly with the idea of social life or, if you +will, of culture; and the individual and social phases of that culture +are broadly represented by the above quotations. For that reason alone +the period is interesting apart from any achievements in art or science +or statecraft. It is interesting because it was a time when people +went about frankly and cheerfully endeavouring to solve the question +“How to Live.” From one point of view such an employment suggests the +bewilderment of a degenerate world, and it would seem entirely to +justify the lamentations of Max Nordau; but those who lived through +the Nineties as young men and women will remember that this search +for a new mode of life was anything but melancholy or diseased. The +very pursuit was a mode of life sufficiently joyful to make life worth +living. But in addition there was the feeling of expectancy, born +not alone of a mere toying with novel ideas, but born equally of a +determination to taste new sensation, even at some personal risk, for +the sake of life and growth. + +“A great creative period is at hand,” wrote William Sharp, in his +preface to _Vistas_; “probably a great dramatic epoch. But what +will for one thing differentiate it from any predecessor is the new +complexity, the new subtlety, in apprehension, in formative conception, +in imaginative rendering.” + +It was an era of hope and action. People thought anything might +happen; and, for the young, any happening sufficiently new was good. +Little of the older sentimentalism survived among the modernists; +those who were of the period desired to be in the movement, and not +mere spectators. It was a time of experiment. Dissatisfied with the +long ages of convention and action which arose out of precedent, +many set about testing life for themselves. The new man wished to be +himself, the new woman threatened to live her own life. The snapping of +apron-strings caused consternation in many a decent household, as young +men and maidens were suddenly inspired to develop their own souls and +personalities. Never, indeed, was there a time when the young were so +young or the old so old. No family, were its record for solid British +respectability established on no matter how secure a basis, was immune +from new ideas; and if the bourgeoisie of the Eighteen Eighties were +inspired to throw their mahogany into the streets, as we have been +assured they were by Max Beerbohm, their successors of the Eighteen +Nineties were barely constrained from doing the same with their most +cherished principles. Decadent minor poets sprang up in the most +unexpected places. The staidest of Nonconformist circles begot strange, +pale youths with abundant hair, whose abandoned thoughts expressed +themselves in “purple patches” of prose, and whose sole aim in life +was to live “passionately” in a succession of “scarlet moments.” +Life-tasting was the fashion, and the rising generation felt as though +it were stepping out of the cages of convention and custom into a +freedom full of tremendous possibilities. + +There were misgivings in more directions than one, but these had +small effect upon the spirit of the first half of the decade. The +experimental life went on in a swirl of song and dialectics. Ideas were +in the air. Things were not what they seemed, and there were visions +about. The Eighteen Nineties was the decade of a thousand “movements.” +People said it was a “period of transition,” and they were convinced +that they were passing not only from one social system to another, but +from one morality to another, from one culture to another, and from +one religion to a dozen or none! But as a matter of fact there was no +concerted action. Everybody, mentally and emotionally, was running +about in a hundred different directions. There was so much to think +about, so much to discuss, so much to see. “A New Spirit of Pleasure is +abroad amongst us,” observed Richard Le Gallienne, “and one that blows +from no mere coteries of hedonistic philosophers, but comes on the four +winds.” The old sobriety of mind had left our shores, and we changed +from a stolid into a volatile nation. At this time the provinces saw +the birth of a new type of music hall, the “Palace of Varieties,” with +two performances a night, and we began to amuse ourselves. + +Our new-found freedom seemed to find just the expression it needed +in the abandoned nonsense chorus of _Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay!_[1] +which, lit at the red skirts of Lottie Collins, spread like a dancing +flame through the land, obsessing the minds of young and old, gay +and sedate, until it became a veritable song-pest, provoking satires +even upon itself in the music halls of its origin. No song ever took a +people in quite the same way; from 1892 to 1896 it affected the country +like an epidemic; and during those years it would seem to have been the +absurd _ça ira_ of a generation bent upon kicking over the traces. +Even to this day one can hear the song in the streets of Boulogne and +Dieppe, where the urchins croak it for the benefit of the English +visitor, under the firm conviction that it is the British National +Anthem, and in hopes that the patriotic Britishers will reward their +efforts with _petit sous_.[2] + +The old dim and dowdy chop-houses and taverns also changed with our new +mood, and they were replaced by larger and brighter restaurants and +“tea shops,” daintier food and orchestras, and we extended the habit of +dining out, and mixing afternoon tea with shopping. + +The “safety” bicycle was invented, and it took its place as an +instrument of the “new” freedom as we glided forth in our thousands +into the country, accompanied by our sisters and sweethearts and wives, +who sometimes abandoned skirts for neat knickerbocker suits. “The +world is divided into two classes,” said a wit of the period, “those +who ride bicycles and those who don’t.” But the great novelty was the +woman cyclist, the New Woman _rampant_, but she was sometimes very +charming also, and we immortalised her in our Palaces of Varieties: + + “_Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do, + I’m half crazy all for the love of you! + It won’t be a stylish marriage, + I can’t afford a carriage, + But you’ll look neat, + Upon the seat + Of a bicycle made for two._” + + + + + CHAPTER II + + PERSONALITIES AND TENDENCIES + + +Such manifestations of liveliness may seem to be of no very great +importance to-day, but many minor freedoms now enjoyed by all without +question were then the subjects of battle. It is difficult to realise +even now how many changes in taste, ideas and habits were crammed into +the _fin de siècle_ decade. For it has been too readily assumed that +the achievement of the Eighteen Nineties is confined to that literary +and artistic renaissance described by W. G. Blaikie Murdoch in _The +Renaissance of the Nineties_. But such a conclusion is unjust to the +period. The fine arts did flourish during the decade, and although many +of the results were as ephemeral as they were extraordinary, others +represent permanent additions to our store of artistic expression. +Still, this habit of looking upon the renaissance as an affair of books +and pictures has led too many into the belief that the main current of +the artistic movement was solely an extension of the art-for-art’s-sake +principle; when, as a matter of fact, the renaissance of the Nineties +was far more concerned with art for the sake of life than with art for +the sake of art. The men with the larger prodigality of genius were +not engaged chiefly with art as art; for good or ill they were engaged +equally with ideas and life. Popular taste also was attracted by the +artist-philosopher, as may be seen by its readiness to appreciate the +older and more didactic painters and writers--just as in other years it +had enjoyed the didacticism of Charles Dickens. Thus George Frederick +Watts, Holman Hunt, Ford Madox Brown, Burne-Jones, for instance, though +not of the period, received their nearest approach to popularity then; +and the same may be said of William Morris, Walter Crane, and the +craftsmen generally who had evolved out of the Ruskinian gospel of +“joy and work” and the Pre-Raphaelite movement. + +This obvious taste on the part of the thoughtful public of the _fin +de siècle_ for art served with ideas found much to its liking in the +writers who came into prominence during the time. Oscar Wilde I have +already indicated as bridging the Eighties and Nineties, just as his +art united the uncompromising artistic sufficiency upheld by Whistler +and the art-culture of Pater. But there were in literature, besides, +Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells, using plays and novels for criticising +morality and teaching newer modes of social life; Rudyard Kipling and +William Ernest Henley using verse to stimulate patriotism; Francis +Adams singing revolt; Edward Carpenter, democracy; William Watson, +justice; and these were as characteristic of the Eighteen Nineties as +the self-centred poets and critics and storytellers who clustered about +_The Yellow Book_ and _The Savoy_. Even painters, Charles +Ricketts and James Pryde and William Nicholson, typical products of +the period, turned their genius for a time into the realm of applied +art; the first, like William Morris, in the making of beautiful books, +and the two latter by becoming, under the pseudonym of the Beggarstaff +Brothers, the founders of our modern school of poster designers. And +apart from all of these instances of art applied to life, or used to +stimulate life, the abundant practical genius of an age which strove +always to express itself in the reordering of social conditions, in +innumerable activities called “progressive,” embracing besides social, +commercial, scientific and imperial affairs, supplies sufficient +evidence of the breadth and variety of a renaissance which strove to +triumph over what was merely artistic. + + [Illustration: COVER DESIGN OF _THE SATURDAY REVIEW_ + CHRISTMAS SUPPLEMENT (1896) + + _By William Rothenstein_] + +The movement of the Eighteen Nineties, however, which has most +engaged the attention of writers, the movement called “Decadent,” +or by the names of Oscar Wilde or Aubrey Beardsley, the movement +Max Nordau denounced in Europe generally, and recently summed up by +_The Times_ under the epithet “The Yellow Nineties,” does even +now dominate the vision as we look backwards. And, indeed, though +only a part of the renaissance, it was sufficiently “brilliant,” to +use one of its own _cliches_, to dazzle those capable of being +dazzled by the achievements of art and letters for many years to +come. For a renaissance of art and ideas which in literature had +for exemplars Oscar Wilde (his best books were all published in the +Nineties), Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling, John Davidson, +Hubert Crackenthorpe, W. B. Yeats, J. M. Barrie, Alice Meynell, George +Moore, Israel Zangwill, Henry Harland, George Gissing, “John Oliver +Hobbes,” Grant Allen, Quiller Couch, Max Beerbohm, Cunninghame Graham, +Fiona Macleod (William Sharp), Richard Le Gallienne, Ernest Dowson, +Arthur Symons, Lionel Johnson, and A. B. Walkley; and in pictorial +art, James Pryde, William Nicholson, Phil May, William Orpen, Aubrey +Beardsley, E. E. Hornel, Wilson Steer, Charles Ricketts, J. J. Shannon, +Charles Shannon, John Lavery, John Duncan Fergusson, J. T. Peploe, +Charles Conder and William Rothenstein could not have been other than +arresting, could not, indeed, be other than important in the history of +the arts. For, whatever may be the ultimate place of these workers in +literature and painting in the national memory, and whatever value we +set upon them then and now, few will deny that even the least of them +did not contribute something of lasting or of temporary worth to the +sensations and ideas of their age, or its vision of life, and to its +conception of spiritual or mental power. + +As to what individuals among these writers and painters were the +peculiar products of the Eighteen Nineties--that is, those who could +not, or might not, have been produced by any other decade--it is not +always easy to say. In dealing with the writers the book-lists of +John Lane, Elkin Mathews and Leonard Smithers are useful guides in +any process of narrowing-down; and further guidance may be found by a +perusal of the files of _The Yellow Book_ and _The Savoy_, +for these two publications were the favourite lamps around which the +most bizarre moths of the Nineties clustered. There were few essential +writers of the Nineties who did not contribute to one or the other, and +the very fact that Henry Harland, who edited the former, and Arthur +Symons, who edited the latter, were able to gather together so many +writers and artists who were at once novel and notable, emphasises the +distinction of the artistic activities of the time. But that emphasis +should not be taken as indicating merely an awakening of virtuosity +during the Nineties; the many definite artistic movements, embracing +both writers and painters and craftsmen, could not have occurred had +there not been a considerable receptivity among the people of the +time. A renaissance of art depends equally upon artist and public: the +one is the complement of the other. The Eighteen Nineties would have +been unworthy of special notice had there not been a public capable of +responding to its awakening of taste and intelligence. + +But doubt is set at rest when we remember how numerous were the +excellent periodicals issued with fair evidence of success. No other +decade in English history has produced so many distinctive and +ambitious publications; for, apart from _The Yellow Book_ and _The +Savoy_, there were _The Parade_, _The Pageant_, _The Evergreen_, +_The Chameleon_, _The Hobby Horse_, _The Rose Leaf_ and, later on, +_The Quarto_, _The Dome_, and that able magazine’s musical brother, +_The Chord_. These periodicals were, of course, the journals which +represented the unique qualities in the literature and art of the +decade; they were bone of its bone and flesh of its flesh. But, +important as they are, they do not by any means complete the typical +and characteristic journalism of the period, for many less exclusive +journals, journals making a wider public appeal, must be named--such +notable examples of periodical literature and art, for example, as +_The Studio_, _The Butterfly_, _The Poster_, _To-Morrow_, _Eureka_, +and more popular still, but excellent also in their way, _The Idler_, +_To-Day_ and _Pick-me-up_. The last, during its best days, and these +covered several years, had among its contributors many of the best +black-and-white artists of the decade; Phil May, Raven Hill, A. S. +Hartrick, W. T. Manuel, S. H. Sime and Edgar Wilson regularly sent +drawings to this sportive publication, which for genius and humour have +not been excelled, even by _Punch_. But although these publications +must be named to the credit of the period, many of them, like many of +the distinguished writers I have named, might conceivably have been +produced at any time during the past forty years. _Pick-me-up_, for +example, presented no new point of view; it was sprightly and humorous +in the popular sense--that is to say, it expressed the inconsequent +outlook of the _bon viveur_ of fiction--and persistently assumed +that cosmopolitan Piccadilly Circus-cum-Leicester Square, and the +Anglo-American Boulevards des Italiens-cum-Montmartre (after midnight) +were the last words in “life.” In short, _Pick-me-up_ represented the +false and altogether absurd “Gay Paree” view of things--and to that +extent it was not of a day but of all time. Such an attitude, however, +is not inconsistent with a genius for art, and _Pick-me-up_ possessed +a staff of black-and-white draughtsmen of unequalled ability, and +sometimes of rare genius; and in addition to its native talent it +also introduced to this country the work of good foreign draughtsmen, +including that of the great French artist Steinlen. Still, an able +group of black-and-white artists is by no means a peculiarity of the +Nineties. The Sixties had _Once a Week_--and _Punch_ has reigned +supreme from the Forties till to-day. Phil May and Raven Hill belonged +to the artistic eminence of the Nineties, but, individual as they are, +they might have happened in any other decade since Charles Keene and +John Leech created the modern humorous pen drawing. One _Pick-me-up_ +artist, and only one, had anything approaching _fin de siècle_ +tendencies; that artist was (and is) S. H. Sime: he is an art product +of the Nineties, along with Aubrey Beardsley, Charles Conder, Charles +Ricketts and Laurence Housman. + +The literary movement of the Eighteen Nineties has had full opportunity +of insisting upon itself, but had no such opportunity existed the books +of the period would have stood out with a certain distinction. In the +year 1890 the literary field was so dominated by men whose reputations +had long since been established, either with the inner circle of +bookish people or the larger public, that any new-comers, especially +in poetry, were apt to be labelled “minor.” Tennyson was still alive, +and Robert Browning had died only in the previous year; Philip James +Bailey was living, though forgotten, and Martin Tupper, like Browning, +had passed away in 1889. William Morris and Algernon Charles Swinburne, +although fully recognised as major poets, had still some good work to +do, and there were a select few who admired the poetry of Coventry +Patmore, and many who thought well of the works of Lewis Morris. And +among women singers Jane Ingelow was still living, and Christina +Rossetti was yet to publish two more volumes. + +John Ruskin and Walter Pater were not only alive, but their +æsthetic-social messages were finding ever wider fields of acceptance. +“The acute but honourable minority,” which hitherto had been George +Meredith’s way of referring to his own small following, was rapidly +becoming a respectable body of supporters, aided not a little by the +discerning but whole-hearted trumpeting of a young man from Liverpool, +Richard Le Gallienne, who was to become a notability of the Nineties. +Thomas Hardy, also, was established, and like Meredith winning to a +wider, though not so tardy, popularity; and he also was heralded by +a young poet of the period, Lionel Johnson, in a fine study called +_The Art of Thomas Hardy_ (1894). John Henry Newman ended his +ardent life in 1890, but Cardinal Manning was still living; so also +were the popular Church of England divines, Archdeacon Farrar and Canon +Liddon, the equally popular Nonconformist, Charles Spurgeon, and at the +antipodes of their faith, James Martineau. In science the great names +of Thomas Henry Huxley, John Tyndall, Herbert Spencer, Francis Galton +were honoured among living geniuses; and so was that of Alfred Russel +Wallace, who survived until the eve of the Great War. The historian, +James Anthony Froude, died in 1894, and W. E. H. Lecky lived through +the decade. + + [Illustration: COVER DESIGN OF _THE SAVOY_, VOLUME + I + + _By Aubrey Beardsley_] + +Literary reputations beginning in the Seventies and Eighties, and only +in a few cases awaiting further buttressing in the Nineties, were +numerous; these, besides those already named, included W. H. Mallock, +Edmund Gosse, Andrew Lang, Robert Louis Stevenson, Frederic Harrison, +William Ernest Henley, John Addington Symonds, Arthur Pinero, +Sidney Colvin, Austin Dobson, Edward Dowden, H. D. Traill, Theodore +Watts-Dunton, Stopford Brooke, James Payn, Leslie Stephen, Henry +James, Grant Allen, William Black, Robert Bridges, Frederick Wedmore, +and among more popular writers, Marie Corelli, Rider Haggard, and +Hall Caine. Mrs Humphry Ward had become famous on the publication of +_Robert Elsmere_, in 1888, but the importance of her work during +the succeeding decade places her, as it does also George Moore, Rudyard +Kipling and George Gissing, each of whom did good work before 1890, in +the newer movement. This latter was not, however, to have its effect +on the younger generation alone, it was so irresistible as to inspire +even those whose life-work was more or less done to new and modern +activities. Thus Thomas Hardy began a new phase of his art in 1891 with +_Tess of the D’Urbervilles_, following it with the masterly, and +ultra-modern, _Jude the Obscure_, in 1895. He also published his +first volume of poems, _Wessex Poems_, in 1898. William Morris +published most of his prose romances in the Nineties, including _News +from Nowhere_, in 1891, and in quick succession _The Roots of the +Mountains_, _The Story of the Glittering Plain_, _The Wood +Beyond the World_, and _The Well at the World’s End_. _The +Water of the Wondrous Isles_ and _The Story of the Sundering +Flood_ were left in manuscript and published after his death. John +Addington Symonds, whose chief work, _The History of the Italian +Renaissance_, was completed between the years 1875–1886, published +_In the Key of Blue_, a book so typical in some ways of the +Nineties that it might well have been written by one of the younger +generation. Frederick Wedmore, without being _fin de siècle_, +published _Renunciations_ (a very Eighteen-Ninety title!) in 1893, +and _English Episodes_, in 1894, both of these have a freshness of +vision quite of the period. Theodore Watts-Danton published his gipsy +novel, _Aylwin_ (1898). The great veteran of black-and-white art, +George du Maurier, suddenly became a popular novelist with the famous +_Trilby_ in 1894, which had been preceded by _Peter Ibbetson_ +(1891) and succeeded by _The Martian_ (1896); and another +veteran artist of great eminence also reasserted himself as a writer +of first-rate power during the period, for it was not until 1890 that +James McNeill Whistler collected and published in a delightful volume +his “Ten O’Clock” lecture, and his various letters to the newspapers, +with other Press cuttings, under the appropriate title of _The Gentle +Art of Making Enemies_. Grant Allen, besides becoming a journalistic +champion of the new school, himself joined the younger generation by +the publication of _The Woman Who Did_, in 1895, and Arthur W. +Pinero, like Thomas Hardy with his novels, began a new phase as a +playwright with the production of _The Second Mrs Tanqueray_, in +1893; for, doubtless, both _Tess of the D’Urbervilles_ and _The +Second Mrs Tanqueray_ would have been premature in the Eighties. +And, finally, Richard Whiteing, veteran journalist, but unknown to +the public by name, suddenly became something like famous by the +publication of _No. 5 John Street_, in the last year of the decade. + +Further evidence of the stimulating atmosphere of the period is to +be found in the number of writers who sprang into existence out of +the _Zeitgeist_ of the decade, as people in this country were +beginning to call the spirit of the times. I do not mean those who +were of the period in the narrower sense, but those who, taking that +which every writer takes from his time, were sufficiently general +in attitude not to have been peculiar to any movement. Among such +writers may be named J. M. Barrie, Conan Doyle, Maurice Hewlett, Owen +Seaman, Barry Pain, Pett Ridge, Israel Zangwill, Anthony Hope, W. H. +Hudson, Joseph Conrad, Jerome K. Jerome, Stanley Weyman, H. A. Vachell, +Stephen Phillips, Henry Newbolt, A. E. Housman, Arthur Christopher +Benson, William Watson, Allen Upward, and the late G. W. Steevens, +all of whom published their first notable work in the Nineties, and +in many instances their best work. A qualification is necessary in +the case of W. H. Hudson, whose earliest work, _The Purple Land +that England Lost_, was born “out of its due time” in 1885, and +consequently neglected by critics and public. Had this remarkable +book been published ten years later, under its abridged title, _The +Purple Land_, such a fate might not have befallen it; the Nineties +almost certainly would have accorded it that recognition for which it +had to await twice ten years. Robert Hichens should also appear in the +above list, but the fact that he wrote in _The Green Carnation_ +(1894) the most notable satire of the period brings him into the more +exclusive movement. + +The writers most imbued with the spirit of the time, direct outcome of +circumstances peculiar to the _fin de siècle_, will be more fully +considered in other chapters of this book. Suffice it to say here that +they fall roughly into groups which express ideas and tendencies then +prevalent and, if not always taking the form of designed movements, +indicating the existence of very definite though subconscious movements +in the psychology of the age. Delightful among _fin de siècle_ +writers were those masters of a new urbanity, which, although in the +direct tradition of Addison and Steele, of Dr Johnson and Charles +Lamb, possessed a _flair_ of its own, a whimsical perversity, a +“brilliance,” quite new to English letters. First and most eminent +of these urbane essayists, for like their earlier prototypes they +practised mainly the essayist’s art, comes Max Beerbohm, who considered +himself outmoded at the age of twenty-four and celebrated the discovery +by collecting his essays in a slim, red volume with paper label and +uncut edges, and publishing them at the sign of The Bodley Head, in +1896, under the title of _The Works of Max Beerbohm_. From the +same publishing house came fascinating volumes by G. S. Street, who +satirised suburbans, talked charmingly of books, art and persons, and +in _The Autobiography of a Boy_ revealed the irony of the youth +who wanted to be himself, and to live his own scarlet life, without +having any particular self to become or any definite life to live, save +that of matching his silk dressing-gown with the furniture of his room. +There were also Charles Whibley, who wrote able studies of scoundrels +and dandies; Richard Le Gallienne, who made a fine art of praise and, +besides reviving the picaresque novel of flirtation in _The Quest of +the Golden Girl_, became a sort of _fin de siècle_ Leigh Hunt; +John Davidson, who wrote the _Fleet Street Eclogues_ and some +curiously urbane novels, but who was more poet than essayist, and, +latterly, was so much interested in ideas that he became a philosopher +using literature as his medium; and Arthur Symons, poet of the music +hall, the café and the _demi-monde_, literary impressionist of +towns, and penetrating critic of the writers and ideas of the decadence +in France and England. + +Another group of writers distinctly associated with the period +received its inspiration from the Celtic revival. Its chief figure was +William Butler Yeats, the Irish poet and dramatist, whose earliest +volumes of distinction, _The Countess Kathleen_ and _The Celtic +Twilight_, were published in 1892 and 1893. With him were Dr Douglas +Hyde, George Russell (A.E.), John Eglinton, Lady Gregory, and others, +who together made up the Irish Literary Movement which eventually +established the Irish National Theatre in Abbey Street, Dublin, and +produced the greatest of modern Irish dramatists, John Millington +Synge. Wales also had its movement, with Ernest Rhys as its chief +figure; and in Scotland there was a more effective revival, which +clustered about Professor Patrick Geddes in Edinburgh and produced four +numbers of a handsome quarterly magazine, called _The Evergreen_, +in 1895, among its contributors being both “Fiona Macleod” and William +Sharp (then supposed to be two separate persons). This Scottish +movement was not entirely artistic in aim, but, like so many activities +of the Nineties, it sought to link art and ideas with life, and so +became actually a social movement with a Socialistic tendency. Next to +W. B. Yeats the most prominent figure of the Celtic revival was Fiona +Macleod, whose first book, _Pharais, A Romance of the Isles_, +appeared in 1894. There was also another Scottish movement, very widely +appreciated on this side of the border. It was called the “Kail Yard +School,” and included the popular dialect fiction of J. M. Barrie, S. +R. Crockett and “Ian Maclaren.” + +The importation of realism from France began in the preceding decade, +with translations of the novels of Emile Zola, for which the translator +and publisher, Ernest Vizetelly, suffered imprisonment, and with the +realistic novels of George Moore during the same period. That writer’s +vivid piece of realism, _Esther Waters_ (1894), made history +also by being the first notable novel to be banned by the libraries +and placed on the _Index Expurgatorius_ of Messrs W. H. Smith & +Son. In the same year a new realist arrived, in the person of Arthur +Morrison, with _Tales of Mean Streets_, which was followed by _A +Child of the Jago_, in 1896. These striking sketches of slum life +were new in so far as they depicted slum life as a thing in itself at +a time when people still looked upon the slums, much as they had done +in the time of Dickens, as a subject for romantic philanthropy. W. +Somerset Maugham published a slum novel, _Liza of Lambeth_, in +1897, which had some considerable vogue, and in 1899 Richard Whiteing’s +_No. 5 John Street_ joined the same class. But there never could +be more than a passing fancy for such sectional realism; slums were +rapidly becoming the affair of the sociologist. Readers of books, and +also those people who rarely read books, turned to the more stimulating +realism, which by the way was not free of romance, of Rudyard Kipling, +who had hitherto appeared in the blue-grey, paper-backed pamphlets +issued, for Anglo-Indian consumption, by Wheeler of Allahabad. In 1890 +their growing fame forced them upon the home booksellers, and when they +were published in this country they aroused so great an interest that +instead of remaining curiosities of Anglo-Indian publishing they became +the chief modern literature of the English-speaking world. There were +realists, too, like Cunninghame Graham, who savoured also of the new +romance, whose first book appeared in 1895, and in the same year Frank +Harris published his first volume of short stories, _Elder Conklin +and Other Stories_. But neither of them achieved popularity. Cold +also was the reception given to the personal experience of poverty +which George Gissing put into his novels; although _The New Grub +Street_ (1891) was at least the first of this unfortunate author’s +works to receive anything like popular recognition. + +I have pointed out more than once that the renaissance of the Nineties +was largely social, and much of its literature reveals this spirit. +There were many writers who made literature of their social zeal, +more particularly among Socialists. Some of the realists, indeed, were +avowed Socialists. Richard Whiteing, Cunninghame Graham, Frank Harris +and Grant Allen were all of that faith. George Bernard Shaw and Robert +Blatchford persistently used their literary skill in the propagation of +social theories, and only less directly was the same thing done at that +time by H. G. Wells, who has since passed through a phase of deliberate +Socialist propaganda. George Bernard Shaw’s first really characteristic +book, _The Quintessence of Ibsenism_, appeared in 1891, his first +play, _Widowers’ Houses_, in 1892, and his earliest collected +plays, _Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant_, in 1898. Throughout the +Nineties he was a busy journalist, criticising music, art, drama, life, +anything in fact that anybody would print, for he had views to express, +and determination to express them, on all phases of our social life. + +Robert Blatchford published _Merrie England_, a remarkable essay +in Socialist special pleading, written for the man-in-the-street in a +strong, simple and picturesque manner. The book attracted wide notice, +and did much towards consolidating the Socialist movement of the time. +Over a million copies were sold, and it has been translated into Welsh, +Danish, German, Dutch, Swedish, French, Spanish, Hebrew and Norwegian. +Edward Carpenter belongs to this class, for although _Towards +Democracy_ was published, with several of his other books, in the +Eighties, he wrote and lectured much during the Nineties. He was also +one of the earliest of English writers to consider problems of sex. And +finally, Sidney Webb, the social historian and sociologist, published +his first works in the late Eighties and the Nineties: _Socialism +in England_ (1889), _The London Programme_ (1892) and with +his wife, Beatrice Webb, _The History of Trades Unionism_ and +_Industrial Democracy_ in 1894 and 1898. The Nineties also saw +the beginning of that careful sociological investigation of poverty +and industrial conditions which has been the basis of so many recent +reforms--the monumental inquiry of Charles Booth into the conditions of +the labouring classes of London. This great work was begun in 1892 and +finished in 1908, and is recorded in seventeen volumes, entitled _The +Life and Labour of the London People_. + +But there is no doubt that the most remarkable phase of the literary +movement of the Eighteen Nineties was that which found expression in +the work of those writers associated with the high journalism of _The +Yellow Book_ and _The Savoy_: poets, essayists and storytellers whose +books were in most instances published either by Mr John Lane, at the +Bodley Head, or by Mr Elkin Mathews, both of whom were established +in Vigo Street. At the beginning of the decade they were partners, +under the title of Elkin Mathews & John Lane; but the partnership was +dissolved, and afterwards the partners carried on separate businesses +almost opposite each other in the same street. Other publishers +associated with the new literary movement were Henry & Co., Laurence & +Bullen and, more intimately, Leonard Smithers, himself a decadent and +the friend and associate of many of the leaders of the group. Nearer +the new century the Unicorn Press continued some of the traditions +of the early Nineties, when the other publishers of the movement had +become normal. These last-named publishers, as in the case of so many +of the British decadents, passed away with the Nineties or thereabouts. +Mr William Heinemann was a notable publisher of the period and in +sympathy with the younger generation; so was Mr Fisher Unwin, who +showed his modernism by advertising his books by means of posters +designed by Aubrey Beardsley; and Mr Grant Richards issued several +important works of the time, notably Bernard Shaw’s _Plays Pleasant and +Unpleasant_, and A. E. Housman’s _A Shropshire Lad_. The lists of any +of these publishers issued during the decade prove interesting reading +even to-day, and they reveal sometimes a type of publisher as _fin de +siècle_ as their literary wares. No one will deny, however, that The +Bodley Head was the chief home of the new movement, for not only did +_The Yellow Book_ issue from that house, but books by Oscar Wilde, John +Davidson, Francis Thompson, Max Beerbohm, Richard Le Gallienne, George +Egerton, Laurence Binyon, Michael Field, Norman Gale, Kenneth Grahame, +Lionel Johnson, Alice Meynell, William Watson, and G. S. Street. +Leonard Smithers made a unique place for himself as a _fin de siècle_ +publisher, and when _The Savoy_ (1896) was published by him he stood +courageously for the ideas and art of the decadence at its darkest +hour. With the passing of that excellent but short-lived quarterly the +decadence in England may be said to have passed away. + +The list of contributors to those two periodicals constitute +practically the _dramatis personæ_ of the movement--with the +notable exception of Oscar Wilde, not any of whose work appeared +in either. _The Yellow Book_ had Henry Harland for literary +editor, and for art editor, Aubrey Beardsley. Its first four numbers +(1894–1895) afford us a clear and comprehensive view of the literary +movement of the Nineties; but after the withdrawal of Aubrey Beardsley, +who transferred his work to _The Savoy_ in January 1896, the +policy of _The Yellow Book_ seemed to change, and this change +proceeded always more away from the characteristics of the early days, +and, save for its yellow covers, _The Yellow Book_ eventually +was hardly to be distinguished from any high-class magazine in book +form. The first number was in the nature of a bombshell thrown into +the world of letters. It had not hitherto occurred to a publisher to +give a periodical the dignity of book form; and, although literature +had before then been treated as journalism, it was quite a new thing +in this country for a group of lesser-known writers and artists +to be glorified in the regal format of a five-shilling quarterly. +But the experiment was a success even in the commercial sense, a +circumstance aided no doubt by its flaming cover of yellow, out of +which the Aubrey Beardsley woman smirked at the public for the first +time. Nothing like _The Yellow Book_ had been seen before. It was +newness _in excelsis_: novelty naked and unashamed. People were +puzzled and shocked and delighted, and yellow became the colour of +the hour, the symbol of the time-spirit. It was associated with all +that was _bizarre_ and queer in art and life, with all that was +outrageously modern. Richard Le Gallienne wrote a _prose fancy_ +on “The Boom in Yellow,” in which he pointed out many applications +of the colour with that _fin de siècle_ flippancy which was one +of his characteristics, without, however, tracing the decorative use +of yellow to Whistler, as he should have done. Nevertheless his essay +recalls very amusingly the fashion of the moment. “Bill-posters,” +he says, “are beginning to discover the attractive qualities of the +colour. Who can ever forget meeting for the first time upon a hoarding +Mr Dudley Hardy’s wonderful Yellow Girl, the pretty advance-guard of +_To-Day_? But I suppose the honour of the discovery of the colour +for advertising purposes rests with Mr Colman; though its recent +boom comes from publishers, and particularly from The Bodley Head. +_The Yellow Book_ with any other colour would hardly have sold as +well--the first private edition of Mr Arthur Benson’s poems, by the +way, came caparisoned in yellow, and with the identical name, _Le +Cahier Jaune_; and no doubt it was largely its title that made the +success of _The Yellow Aster_.” + +The first number of _The Yellow Book_, published in April 1894, +contained contributions by Richard Le Gallienne, Max Beerbohm, +Ella D’Arcy, Arthur Symons, Henry Harland, George Egerton, Hubert +Crackenthorpe, John Davidson, John Oliver Hobbes and George Moore, all +of whom were in the vanguard of the new movement, and among the newer +artists, besides Aubrey Beardsley, who contributed four full drawings, +the cover decorations and title-page, there were Walter Sickert, Joseph +Pennell, Laurence Housman, Will Rothenstein, and R. Anning Bell. But +although _The Yellow Book_ was mainly _fin de siècle_ it +was not exclusively so, for it included contributions by Henry James, +Arthur Christopher Benson, William Watson, Arthur Waugh, Richard +Garnett and Edmund Gosse, and illustrations by J. T. Nettleship and +Charles W. Furse, and, above all, as though to reassure its readers +and the British public after the Beardsley cover, and certain contents +to match, and to assert its fundamental respectability, it contained a +frontispiece by Sir Frederick Leighton, P.R.A. Volume II. had Norman +Gale, Alfred Hayes, Dolly Radford and Kenneth Grahame among its new +contributors, and P. Wilson Steer, E. J. Sullivan, A. S. Hartrick +and Walter Crane among its illustrators. Volume III. was more modern +than Volume II., for in addition to many of the younger generation +who contributed to the earlier volumes it introduced into its company +Ernest Dowson, Lionel Johnson, Olive Custance, Theodore Wratislaw +and Charles Dalmon, whilst Max Beerbohm was represented among the +illustrators by his caricature of George IV. The most notable addition +to the contributors of Volume IV. was Charles Conder, who sent a design +for a fan; and Volume V. is interesting as it contains an article by +G. S. Street, the first English essay on Anatole France, by the Hon. +Maurice Baring, and the first article by that distinguished French +writer and _savant_ ever published in England. + +In spite, however, of its novelty, and the excellence of the contents +of its early numbers, _The Yellow Book_ was always inclined not +only to compromise in matters of editorial policy, but its contents +were not always chosen according to the high standard such a work +demanded, and this became more pronounced after the retirement of +Beardsley. _The Savoy_ pursued a different policy. Edited by +Arthur Symons, it stood boldly for the modern note without fear and +without any wavering of purpose. Hence it represents the most ambitious +and, if not the most comprehensive, the most satisfying achievement +of _fin de siècle_ journalism in this country. Such a result was +inevitable with an editor of rare critical genius and one who had +been profoundly influenced by the French decadents. If his choice was +not always decadent it was always modern, even when it selected a +drawing of a distant time. This can be seen also among the literary +contributors to _The Savoy_, among whom were Arthur Symons, W. +B. Yeats, Theodore Wratislaw, Ernest Rhys, Fiona Macleod, George +Moore, Edward Carpenter, Ford Madox Hueffer and Lionel Johnson. All +are _fin de siècle_ writers, though differing in type and aim, +and such writers could hardly do otherwise than give the periodical a +decidedly modern expression, in spite of a challenging Editorial Note +prefaced to No. 1 (dictated, it would seem, by dissatisfaction with +the uneven editing, _fin de siècle_ pose with apparent readiness +to compromise of _The Yellow Book_), which disavowed a definite +modernist intent: + + “It is hoped that THE SAVOY will be a periodical of an + exclusively literary and artistic kind. To present Literature + in the shape of its letterpress, Art in the form of its + illustrations, will be its aim. For the attainment of that aim + we can but rely on our best endeavours and on the logic of our + belief that good writers and artists will care to see their work + in company with the work of good writers and artists. Readers + who look to a new periodical for only very well-known or only + very obscure names must permit themselves to be disappointed. We + have no objection to a celebrity who deserves to be celebrated, + or to an unknown person who has not been seen often enough to be + recognised in passing. All we ask from our contributors is good + work, and good work is all we offer our readers. This we offer + with some confidence. We have no formulas, and we desire no + false unity of form or matter. 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. We hope to appeal + to the tastes of the intelligent by not being original for + originality’s sake, or audacious for the sake of advertisement, + or timid for the convenience of the elderly-minded. We intend + to print no verse which has not some close relationship with + poetry, no fiction which has not a certain sense of what + is finest in living fact, no criticism which has not some + knowledge, discernment and sincerity in its judgment. We could + scarcely say more, and we are content to think we can scarcely + say less.” + +_The Savoy_ lived for twelve months, and during that time it went +far towards realising its editor’s ideal. It did realise that ideal +to the extent of not admitting anything to its pages which could not +be recommended alone on artistic grounds, and it never for a moment +stepped beneath its high intent for the sake of financial gain or any +of the other snares and pitfalls of even well-meaning editors. Among +contributors who were modern without being decadent were Bernard +Shaw, who is represented in the first number by his most essay-like +essay, “On Going to Church”; Havelock Ellis, who contributed one of the +earliest articles in English on Friedrich Nietzsche; Frederick Wedmore, +Edmund Gosse, Selwyn Image, Mathilde Blind and Joseph Conrad. Besides +these _The Savoy_ contained translations from Paul Verlaine, Emil +Verhaeren and Cesare Lombroso. The illustrations were always modern, +and always distinguished, and included, in addition to the last and, in +many instances, best of Aubrey Beardsley’s drawings, examples of the +work of Charles Conder, Will Rothenstein, C. H. Shannon, Max Beerbohm, +Joseph Pennell, William T. Horton, Walter Sickert and Phil May. It also +reveals Aubrey Beardsley as a writer in both prose and poetry, the +former taking the shape of his aggressively modern romance, _Under +the Hill_. _The Savoy_ was admittedly an art-for-art’s-sake +publication, and its failure in twelve months through lack of support +proves that there was at the time no public for such a publication, +even though the half-a-crown charged for each issue was not only half +the price of _The Yellow Book_, but well within the reach of a +fairly numerous cultured class. That class proved unequal to the demand +of a decadent periodical of a fine type. Neither did the fact of a +number being banned by Messrs W. H. Smith & Son, because it contained a +reproduction of one of William Blake’s pictures, have any appreciable +effect on its circulation; and, finally, funds reached so low an ebb +that Arthur Symons was forced to write the whole of the last number +himself, and in his epilogue to his readers on the last page of that +number he confessed to the pessimistic belief that “Comparatively few +people care for art at all, and most of these care for it because +they mistake it for something else,” which in a way is true, but +not necessarily unwise on the part of the majority, for art, as the +Nineties were beginning to learn, was less important than life. But +that does not invalidate the excellence of _The Savoy_. + +A final attempt was made to produce a good periodical by the +publication of _The Dome_, described as “A Quarterly containing +examples of all the Arts,” at the price of one shilling, in 1898, two +years after the death of _The Savoy_. But this quarterly never +attempted to do more than represent the various arts; it had no guiding +theory save excellence, with the result that it was less definite than +either of its forerunners. It admitted good work of the past as well +as the present, and reprinted many fine examples of ancient and modern +wood-engraving. Notable among its modern illustrators were Gordon +Craig and Althea Giles; and among its writers, Laurence Binyon, W. +B. Yeats, C. J. Holmes, Laurence Housman, T. W. H. Crosland, Stephen +Phillips, Fiona Macleod, John F. Runciman, T. Sturge Moore, Francis +Thompson, Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, Gordon Bottomley, Arthur Symons, Roger +Fry, “Israfel,” and there was also a translation of one of Maurice +Maeterlinck’s earliest stories, _The Massacre of the Innocents_. + +It will be seen from the foregoing that the art movement of the +Eighteen Nineties found one of its most characteristic expressions +in _belles lettres_. It was largely a literary renaissance, +exemplifying itself in poetry, drama, fiction and the essay. Books +became once again respected for their own sakes; publishers, led by +John Lane, Elkin Mathews and, later, by J. M. Dent, competed as much +in beauty and daintiness of production as in names and contents, and +this bookish reverence reached its highest expression in a veritable +apotheosis of the book at the hands of William Morris of the Kelmscott +Press and Hacon & Ricketts of the Vale Press. But this branch of the +fine arts, although still remote from the average national life, was no +longer remote in the old sense; it did not desire academic honours, and +those who promoted the renaissance had no idea of establishing a corner +in culture. An air of freedom surrounded the movement; old ideals were +not the only things that suffered at the hands of the iconoclasts, +but, as we have seen, old barriers and boundaries were broken down and +pitched aside; a new right-of-way was proclaimed, and invitations to +take to it were scattered broadcast. It was not entirely a democratic +movement, however, and in some of its more intense moments it was not +at all democratic. What really happened in the Nineties was that doors +were thrown open and people might enter and pass through into whatever +lay beyond if they would or could, and whether they were invited or +not. To that extent the period was democratic. Such an attitude was +a more or less intuitive recognition of a very obvious awakening of +intelligence which represented the first mental crop of the movement +towards popular education. The Board Schools were bearing fruit; +Secondary Education and University Extension culture were producing a +new inquisitiveness. Ibsen’s younger generation was knocking at the +door. The growing demand for culture was partially satisfied, in the +case of those who could expect no further aid from the educational +system, by popular reprints of the classics, as could be seen by the +ever-growing demand for the volumes of _The Scott Library_, _The +Canterbury Poets_ and _The Temple Classics_. The mental and +imaginative stimulus thus obtained created a hunger in many for still +newer sensations, and many of these passed through the doors of the +decadents or the realists into stranger realms. The remainder, unable +to appreciate the bizarre atmosphere of _The Yellow Book_, turned +with avidity to the new romantic literature of the Yellow Press. + +The Eighteen Nineties were to no small extent the battleground of these +two types of culture--the one represented by _The Yellow Book_, +the other by the Yellow Press. The one was unique, individual, a little +weird, often exotic, demanding the right to _be_--in its own way +even to waywardness; but this was really an abnormal minority, and in +no sense national. The other was broad, general popular; it was the +majority, the man-in-the-street awaiting a new medium of expression. In +the great fight the latter won. _The Yellow Book_, with all its +“new” hopes and hectic aspirations, has passed away, and _The Daily +Mail_, established two years later, flourishes. In a deeper sense, +also, these two publications represent the two phases of the times. The +characteristic excitability and hunger for sensation are exemplified in +the one as much as the other, for what after all was the “brilliance” +of Vigo Street but the “sensationalism” of Fleet Street seen from the +cultured side? Both were the outcome of a society which had absorbed a +bigger idea of life than it knew how to put into practice, and it is +not surprising to those who look back upon the period to find that both +tendencies, in so far as they were divorced from the social revolution +of the Nineties, were nihilistic, the one finding its Moscow at the Old +Bailey, in 1895, the other in South Africa, in 1899. + +I use both terms and dates symbolically, for I am neither blind to +the element of injustice in the condemnation of Oscar Wilde nor to +the soul of goodness in the South African War. But at the moment I am +dealing with main tendencies, and trying to give an idea-picture of a +period, which was self-contained even in its disasters. The first half +was remarkable for a literary and artistic renaissance, degenerating +into decadence; the second for a new sense of patriotism degenerating +into jingoism. The former was in the ascendant during the first five +years. In 1895 the literary outlook in England had never been brighter; +an engaging and promising novelty full of high vitality pervaded the +Press and the publishers’ lists, and it was even commencing to invade +the stage, when with the arrest of Oscar Wilde the whole renaissance +suffered a sudden collapse as if it had been no more than a gaily +coloured balloon. “The crash of the fall certainly affected the whole +spirit of this year,” says R. H. Gretton, in his _Modern History of +the English People_. “There were few great houses in London where +he was not known; fewer still where there was not among the younger +generation an aggressive, irresponsible intolerance which had some +relation, however vague, to his brilliant figure. Even athleticism +rejoiced at this date to dissociate itself from anything that might +have been in danger of easy approval from an older generation, by being +too æsthetic; captains of university football teams had been seen +with long hair. There was too much of real revolt in the movement to +allow the fate of one man to hold it lastingly in check; but a certain +silence, almost, if not quite, shamefaced, settled for the moment on +much of the social life of the country.” Two of Oscar Wilde’s plays +were being performed at the time, and they were immediately suppressed. +Outside of the smoking-room that writer’s name was scarcely whispered; +it was suppressed entirely in the newspapers. His books were allowed +to go out of print, and unauthorised publishers pirated them, and +were allowed for a time to thrive upon the _succès de scandale_ +attained by the books because of the misfortune of their author. + +With the arresting of the art movement of the Nineties came the chance +of the man-in-the-street, whose new intellectual needs found a new +caterer in Alfred Harmsworth. The political prejudices of the average +man and his need for romance by proxy were exploited with phenomenal +success by the audacious genius of the great newspaper administrator +who has since won a world-wide reputation as Lord Northcliffe. _The +Daily Mail_ openly fanned the Jingo flame, already beginning to leap +aloft under the inspiration of Joseph Chamberlain and Cecil Rhodes, +and the melodramatic Jameson Raid of December 1895. Then came the +Jubilee of 1897, when pride of race reached so unseemly a pitch that +Rudyard Kipling even, the acknowledged poet of Imperialism, as the new +patriotism was called, was moved to rebuke his compatriots: + + “_If, drunk with sight of power, we loose + Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe, + Such boastings as the Gentiles use, + Of lesser breeds without the Law. + Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, + Lest we forget--lest we forget!_” + +But there was no turning back. Bitten by an unseeing pride, expressing +itself in a strangely inorganic patriotism, the nation forgot art +and letters and social regeneration, in the indulgence of blatant +aspirations which reached their apotheosis in the orgy of Mafeking +Night. + + + + + CHAPTER III + + THE DECADENCE + + +No English writer has a better claim to recognition as an interpreter +of the decadence in recent English literature than Arthur Symons. He +of all the critics in the Eighteen Nineties was sufficiently intimate +with the modern movement to hold, and sufficiently removed from it +in his later attitude to express, an opinion which should be at once +sympathetic and reasonably balanced without pretending to colourless +impartiality. But during the earlier phase his vision of the decadent +idea was certainly clearer than it was some years later, when he strove +to differentiate decadence and symbolism. + +“The most representative literature of the day,” he wrote in 1893, +“the writing which appeals to, which has done so much to form, the +younger generation, is certainly not classic, nor has it any relation +to that old antithesis of the classic, the romantic. 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. If what we call the classic is indeed the supreme +art--those qualities of perfect simplicity, perfect sanity, perfect +proportion, the supreme qualities--then this representative literature +of to-day, interesting, beautiful, novel as it is, is really a new and +beautiful and interesting disease.”[3] + +Six years later Arthur Symons, like so many of the writers of the +period, was beginning to turn his eyes from the “new and beautiful and +interesting disease,” and to look inwardly for spiritual consolation. +In the “Dedication” to _The Symbolist Movement in Literature_ he +told W. B. Yeats that he was “uncertainly but inevitably” finding his +way towards that mystical acceptation of reality which had always been +the attitude of the Irish poet. And further on in the same book, as +though forgetting the very definite interpretation of decadence given +by him in the article of 1893, he writes of it as “something which is +vaguely called Decadence,” a term, he said, used as a reproach or a +defiance: + + “It pleased some young men in various countries to call + themselves Decadents, with all the thrill of unsatisfied + virtue masquerading as uncomprehended vice. As a matter of + fact, the term is in its place only when applied to style, to + that ingenious deformation of the language, in Mallarmé, for + instance, which can be compared with what we are accustomed to + call the Greek and Latin of the Decadence. No doubt perversity + of form and perversity of matter are often found together, and, + among the lesser men especially, experiment was carried far, not + only in the direction of style. But a movement which in this + sense might be called Decadent could but have been a straying + aside from the main road of literature.... The interlude, half + a mock-interlude, of Decadence, diverted the attention of the + critics while something more serious was in preparation. That + something more serious has crystallised, for the time, under + the form of Symbolism, in which art returns to the one pathway, + leading through beautiful things to the eternal beauty.” + +In the earlier essay he certainly saw more in decadence than mere +novelty of style, and rightly so, for style can no more be separated +from idea than from personality. The truth of the matter, however, +lies probably between the two views. What was really decadent in the +Eighteen Nineties did seem to weed itself out into mere tricks of style +and idiosyncrasies of sensation; and whilst doing so it was pleased to +adopt the term decadence, originally used as a term of reproach, as a +badge. But with the passing of time the term has come to stand for a +definite phase of artistic consciousness, and that phase is precisely +what Arthur Symons described it to be in his earlier article, an +endeavour “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.” + +The decadent movement in English art was the final outcome of the +romantic movement which began near the dawn of the nineteenth century. +It was the mortal ripening of that flower which blossomed upon the +ruins of the French Revolution, heralding not only the rights of man, +which was an abstraction savouring more of the classic ideal, but +the rights of personality, of unique, varied and varying men. The +French romanticists, led by Victor Hugo, recognised this in their +glorification of Napoleon; but fear and hatred of the great Emperor +generated in the hearts of the ruling classes in this country and +propagated among the people prevented the idea from gaining acceptance +here. At the same time decadence was neither romantic nor classic; +its existence in so far as it was dependent upon either of those art +traditions was dependent upon both. The decadents were romantic in +their antagonism to current forms, but they were classic in their +insistence upon new. And it must not be forgotten that far from being +nihilistic in aim they always clung, at times with desperation, to +one already established art-form or another. The French artists of +the first revolutionary period depended as much upon the traditions +of republican Greece and Rome as those of the revolution of July, and +the poets of Britain, led by Walter Scott and Byron, depended upon +the traditions of mediæval feudalism. Romanticism was a reshuffling +of ideals and ideas and a recreation of forms; it was renascent and +novel. It could be both degenerate and regenerate, and contain at the +same time many more contradictions, because at bottom it was a revolt +of the spirit against formal subservience to mere reason. It is true +that there is ultimately an explanation for all things, a reason for +everything, but it was left for romance to discover a reason for +unreason. It was the romantic spirit in the art of Sir Walter Scott +which saw no inconsistency between the folk-soul and the ideals of +chivalry and nobility; that taught Wordsworth to reveal simplicity as, +in Oscar Wilde’s words, “the last refuge of complexity”; that inspired +John Keats with a new classicism in _Endymion_ brighter than +anything since _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_, and _Comus_, +and a new mediævalism in _The Eve of St Agnes_ fairer than +“all Olympus’ faded hierarchy.” It taught Shelley that the most +strenuous and the most exalted individual emphasis was not necessarily +antagonistic to a balanced communal feeling, and that the heart of +Dionysos could throb and burn in the form of Apollo; and above all it +taught Samuel Taylor Coleridge that mystery lurked in common things and +that mysticism was not merely a cloistral property. + +Though all of these tendencies of thought and expression went to the +making of the decadence in England, the influence, with the exception +of that of Keats, was indirect and foreign. In that it was native the +impulsion came directly from the Pre-Raphaelites, and more particularly +from the poetry of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Swinburne. But the chief +influences came from France, and partially for that reason the English +decadents always remained spiritual foreigners in our midst; they were +not a product of England but of cosmopolitan London. It is certain +Oscar Wilde (hounded out of England to die in Paris), Aubrey Beardsley +(admittedly more at home in the _brasserie_ of the Café Royale +than elsewhere in London) and Ernest Dowson (who spent so much of his +time in Soho) would each have felt more at home in Paris or Dieppe +than, say, in Leeds or Margate. The modern decadence in England was an +echo of the French movement which began with Théophile Gautier (who was +really the bridge between the romanticists of the Victor Hugo school +and the decadents who received their inspiration from Edmond and Jules +de Goncourt), Paul Verlaine and Joris Karl Huysmans. In short, Gautier, +favourite disciple of Victor Hugo, represented the consummation +of the old romanticism, and he did this by inaugurating that new +romanticism, which had for apostles the Parnassiens, Symbolists and +Decadents. French romanticism begins with _Hernani_, and ends +with _Mademoiselle de Maupin_. Decadence properly begins with +_Mademoiselle de Maupin_ and closes with _À Rebours_. In +England it began by accident with Walter Pater’s Studies in Art and +Poetry, The _Renaissance_, which was not entirely decadent, and +it ended with Oscar Wilde’s _Picture of Dorian Gray_ and Aubrey +Beardsley’s romance, _Under the Hill_, which were nothing if not +decadent. + +The accident by which Pater became a decadent influence in English +literature was due to a misapprehension of the precise meaning of the +famous “Conclusion” to the first edition of the volume originally +issued in 1873, which led the author to omit the chapter from the +second edition (1877). “I conceived it might possibly mislead some of +those young men into whose hands it might fall,” he wrote, when he +reintroduced it with some slight modifications, bringing it closer to +his original meaning, into the third edition of the book, in 1888. +Nevertheless there was sufficient material in the revised version to +stimulate certain minds in a direction only very remotely connected +with that austere philosophy of sensations briefly referred to in The +_Renaissance_ and afterwards developed by Walter Pater under the +idea of a “New Cyrenaicism” in _Marius the Epicurean_ (1885). To +those seeking a native sanction for their decadence, passages even +in _Marius_ read like invitations. “With the Cyrenaics of all +ages, he would at least fill up the measure of that present with vivid +sensations, and such intellectual apprehensions as, in strength and +directness and their immediately realised values at the bar of an +actual experience, are most like sensations.” Such passages seemed in +the eyes of the decadents to give a perverse twist to the æsthetic +Puritanism of the intellectual evolution of Marius, and to fill with a +new naughtiness that high discipline of exquisite taste to which the +young pagan subjected himself. It is not surprising then to find even +the revised version of the famous “Conclusion” acting as a spark to the +tinder of the new acceptance of life. + + “The service of philosophy, of speculative culture, towards the + human spirit is to rouse, to startle it into sharp and eager + observation. Every moment some form grows perfect in hand or + face; some tone on the hills or the sea is choicer than the + rest; some mood of passion or insight or intellectual excitement + is irresistibly real and attractive for us,--for that moment + only. Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is + the end. A counted number of pulses only is given to us of a + variegated, dramatic life. How may we see in them all that is + to be seen in them by the finest senses? How shall we pass + most swiftly from point to point, and be present always at the + focus where the greatest number of vital forces unite in their + purest energy? To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to + maintain this ecstasy, is success in life. In a sense it might + even be said that our failure is to form habits; for, after + all, habit is relative to a stereotyped world, and meantime it + is only the roughness of the eye that makes any two persons, + things, situations, seem alike. While all melts under our feet, + we may well catch at any exquisite passion, or any contribution + to knowledge that seems by a lifted horizon to set the spirit + free for a moment, or any stirring of the senses, strange dyes, + strange colours and curious odours, or work of the artist’s + hands, or the face of one’s friend. Not to discriminate every + moment some passionate attitude in those about us, and in + the brilliancy of their gifts some tragic dividing of forces + on their ways, is, on this short day of frost and sun, to + sleep before evening. With this sense of the splendour of our + experience and of its awful brevity, gathering all we are into + one desperate effort to see and touch, we shall hardly have + time to make theories about the things we see and touch. What + we have to do is to be for ever curiously testing new opinions + and courting new impressions, never acquiescing in a facile + orthodoxy of Comte, or of Hegel, or of our own. Philosophical + theories or ideas, as points of view, instruments of criticism, + may help us to gather up what might otherwise pass unregarded + by us. ‘Philosophy is the microscope of thought.’ The theory or + idea or system which requires of us the sacrifice of any part + of this experience, in consideration of some interest into which + we cannot enter, or some abstract theory we have not identified + with ourselves, or what is only conventional, has no real claim + upon us.” + +But misappropriation of the teaching of Walter Pater was only an +incident in the progress of decadence in England. By the dawn of the +last decade of the century susceptible thought had reverted to the +original French path of decadent evolution which manifested itself from +Théophile Gautier and Charles Baudelaire through the brothers Goncourt, +Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, Stéphane Mallarmé, to Huysmans, with a +growing tendency towards little secret raids over the German frontier +where the aristocratic philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche was looted and +made to flash approval of intentions and ideas which that philosopher, +like Pater, had lived and worked to supersede. The publication of +_The Picture of Dorian Gray_ in 1891 revealed the main influence +quite definitely, for, apart from the fact that Wilde’s novel bears +many obvious echoes of the most remarkable of French decadent novels, +the _À Rebours_ of J. K. Huysmans, which Arthur Symons has called +“the breviary of the decadence,” it contains the following passage +which, although _À Rebours_ is not named, is generally understood +to refer to that book, even if the fact were not otherwise obvious:-- + + “His eyes fell on the yellow book that Lord Henry had sent + him. What was it, he wondered. He went towards the little + pearl-coloured octagonal stand, that had always looked to + him like the work of some strange Egyptian bees that wrought + in silver, and taking up the volume, flung himself into an + arm-chair, and began to turn over the leaves. After a few + minutes he became absorbed. + + “It was the strangest book he had ever read. It seemed to him + that in exquisite raiment, and to the delicate sound of flutes, + the sins of the world were passing in dumb show before him. + Things that he had dimly dreamed of were suddenly made real + to him. Things of which he had never dreamed were gradually + revealed. + + “It was a novel without a plot, and with only one character, + being, indeed, simply a psychological study of a certain young + Parisian who spent his life trying to realise in the nineteenth + century all the passions and modes of thought that belonged + to every century except his own, and to sum up, as it were, + in himself the various moods through which the world-spirit + had ever passed, loving for their mere artificiality those + renunciations that men have unwisely called virtue as much as + those natural rebellions that wise men still call sin. The style + in which it was written was that curious jewelled style, vivid + and obscure at once, full of _argot_ and of archaisms, + of technical expressions and of elaborate paraphrases, that + characterises the work of some of the finest artists of the + French school of symbolists. There were in it metaphors as + monstrous as orchids and as evil in colour. The life of the + senses was described in the terms of mystical philosophy. One + hardly knew at times whether one was reading the spiritual + ecstasies of some mediæval saint or the morbid confessions of + a modern sinner. It was a poisonous book. The heavy odour of + incense seemed to cling about its pages and to trouble the + brain. The mere cadence of the sentences, the subtle monotony of + their music, so full as it was of complex refrains and movements + elaborately repeated, produced in the mind of the lad, as he + passed from chapter to chapter, a form of reverie, a malady of + dreaming, that made him unconscious of the falling day and the + creeping shadows.” + +This book so revealed Dorian Gray to himself that he became frankly the +Duc Jean des Esseintes of English literature. There are differences, to +be sure, and the sensations and ideas of Dorian Gray are not elaborated +so scientifically as those of des Esseintes, but there is something +more than coincidence in the resemblance of their attitudes towards +life. + +Jean des Esseintes and Dorian Gray are the authentic decadent types. +Extreme they are, as a matter of course, but their prototypes did exist +in real life, and minus those incidents wherein extreme decadence +expresses itself in serious crime, such as murder or incitement to +murder, those prototypes had recognisable corporeal being. + +In the Eighteen Nineties two such types were Oscar Wilde and Aubrey +Beardsley, each of whom approximated, if not in action, then in mind +and idea to des Esseintes and Dorian Gray. There was in both a typical +perversity of thought, which in Wilde’s case led to a contravention +of morality evoking the revenge of society and a tragic ending to a +radiant career. Both preferred the artificial to the natural. “The +first duty in life is to be as artificial as possible,” said Oscar +Wilde, adding, “what the second duty is no one has as yet discovered.” +The business of art as he understood it was to put Nature in her proper +place. To be natural was to be obvious, and to be obvious was to be +inartistic. Aubrey Beardsley invented a new artificiality in black and +white art, and in his romance, _Under the Hill_, only a carefully +expurgated edition of which has been made generally accessible to the +public, he created an _À Rebours_ of sexuality. And both possessed +an exaggerated curiosity as to emotional and other experiences combined +with that precocity which is characteristic of all decadents. The +curiosity and precocity of the decadence were revealed in an English +writer before the Eighteen Nineties by the publication, in 1886, of +the _Confessions of a Young Man_, by George Moore; but apart from +the fact that the author who shocked the moral susceptibilities of +the people who control lending libraries, with _Esther Waters_, +loved the limelight and passed through enthusiasms for all modern +art movements, he was as far removed from the typical decadent as +the latter is removed from the average smoking-room citizen who +satisfies an age-long taste for forbidden fruit with a _risqué_ +story. George Moore played at decadence for a little while, but the +real influences of his life were Flaubert and the naturalists on the +one side, and their corollaries in the graphic arts, Manet and the +impressionists, on the other. For the rest he insisted upon England +accepting the impressionists; abandoned realism; introduced into this +country the work of Verlaine and Rimbaud, and the autobiography of +indiscretion; flirted with the Irish Literary Movement, and its vague +mysticism--and remained George Moore. + +The chief characteristics of the decadence were (1) Perversity, (2) +Artificiality, (3) Egoism and (4) Curiosity, and these characteristics +are not at all inconsistent with a sincere desire “to find 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.” Indeed, when +wrought into the metal of a soul impelled to adventure at whatever +hazard, for sheer love of expanding the boundaries of human experience +and knowledge and power, these characteristics become, as it were, the +senses by which the soul may test the flavour and determine the quality +of its progress. In that light they are not decadent at all, they are +at one with all great endeavour since the dawn of human consciousness. +What, after all, is human consciousness when compared with Nature but a +perversity--the self turning from Nature to contemplate itself? And is +not civilisation artifice’s conspiracy against what is uncivilised and +natural? As for egoism, we ought to have learnt by this time that it is +not sufficient for a being to say “I am.” He is not a factor in life +until he can add to that primal affirmation a consummating “I will.” +“To be” and “to will” exercised together necessitate action, which in +turn involves experience, and experience, not innocence, is the mother +of curiosity. Not even a child has curiosity until it has experienced +something; all inquisitiveness is in the nature of life asking for +more, and all so-called decadence is civilisation rejecting, through +certain specialised persons, the accumulated experiences and sensations +of the race. It is a demand for wider ranges, newer emotional and +spiritual territories, fresh woods and pastures new for the soul. +If you will, it is a form of imperialism of the spirit, ambitious, +arrogant, aggressive, waving the flag of human power over an ever wider +and wider territory. And it is interesting to recollect that decadent +art periods have often coincided with such waves of imperial patriotism +as passed over the British Empire and various European countries during +the Eighteen Nineties. + +It is, of course, permissible to say that such outbreaks of curiosity +and expansion are the result of decay, a sign of a world grown +_blasé_, tired, played-out; but it should not be forgotten that +the effort demanded by even the most ill-directed phases of decadent +action suggests a liveliness of energy which is quite contrary to +the traditions of senile decay. During the Eighteen Nineties such +liveliness was obvious to all, and even in its decadent phases the +period possessed tonic qualities. But the common-sense of the matter +is that where the so-called decadence made for a fuller and brighter +life, demanding ever more and more power and keener sensibilities from +its units, it was not decadent. The decadence was decadent only when +it removed energy from the common life and set its eyes in the ends +of the earth whether those ends were pictures, blue and white china, +or colonies. True decadence was therefore degeneration arising not +out of senility, for there is nothing old under the sun, but out of +surfeit, out of the ease with which life was maintained and desires +satisfied. To kill a desire, as you can, by satisfying it, is to +create a new desire. The decadents always did that, with the result +that they demanded of life not repetition of old but opportunities for +new experiences. The whole attitude of the decadence is contained in +Ernest Dowson’s best-known poem: “Non sum qualis eram bonæ sub regno +Cynaræ,” with that insatiate demand of a soul surfeited with the food +that nourishes not, and finding what relief it can in a rapture of +desolation: + + “I cried for madder music and for stronger wine, + But when the feast is finished, and the lamps expire, + Then falls thy shadow, Cynara! the night is thine; + And I am desolate and sick of an old passion, + Yea, hungry for the lips of my desire: + I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion!” + +In that poem we have a sort of parable of the decadent soul. Cynara is +a symbol of the unattained and perhaps unattainable joy and peace which +is the eternal dream of man. The decadents of the Nineties, to do them +justice, were not so degenerate as either to have lost hope in future +joy or to have had full faith in their attainment of it. Coming late in +a century of material pressure and scientific attainment they embodied +a tired mood, rejected hope, beyond the moment, and took a subtle joy +in playing with fire and calling it sin; in scourging themselves for +an unholy delight, in tasting the bitter-sweet of actions potent with +remorse. They loved the cleanliness in unclean things, the sweetness +in unsavoury alliances; they did not actually kiss Cynara, they kissed +her by the proxy of some “bought red mouth.” It was as though they had +grown tired of being good, in the old accepted way, they wanted to +experience the piquancy of being good after a debauch. They realised +that a merited kiss was not half so sweet as a kiss of forgiveness, +and this subtle voluptuousness eventually taught them that the road +called decadence also led to Rome. The old romanticism began by being +Catholic; Théophile Gautier strove to make it pagan, and succeeded for +a time, but with Huysmans romanticism in the form of decadence reverted +to Rome. In England the artists who represented the renaissance of the +Nineties were either Catholics like Francis Thompson and Henry Harland +or prospective converts to Rome, like Oscar Wilde, Aubrey Beardsley, +Lionel Johnson and Ernest Dowson. If Catholicism did not claim them +some other form of mysticism did, and W. B. Yeats and George Russell +(A.E.) became Theosophists. The one who persistently hardened himself +against the mystical influences of his period, John Davidson, committed +suicide. + +The general public first realised the existence of the decadence +with the arrest and trial of Oscar Wilde, and, collecting its wits +and its memories of _The Yellow Book_, the drawings of Aubrey +Beardsley, and the wilful and perverse epigrams of _A Woman of No +Importance_, it shook its head knowingly and intimated that this +sort of thing must be stopped. And the suddenness with which the +decadent movement in English literature and art ceased, from that time, +proves, if it proves nothing else, the tremendous power of outraged +public opinion in this country. But it also proves that English +thought and English morality, however superficial on the one hand +and however hypocritical on the other, would neither understand nor +tolerate the curious exotic growth which had flowered in its midst. + +The passing of the decadence in England had been prepared by +the satires of Robert Hichens and G. S. Street, in _The Green +Carnation_ and _The Autobiography of a Boy_, just as its +earlier phase, the Æsthetic Movement, had been laughed out of +any popularity it might have won by W. H. Mallock in _The New +Republic_, W. S. Gilbert in _Patience_, and by George du +Maurier in a famous series of humorous drawings in _Punch_. +The weakness of _The Green Carnation_ is that satire sails so +perilously near reality as, at times, to lose itself in a wave of fact. +At times the book reads more like an indiscretion than a satire, but no +other writer has realised so well the fatuous side of the “exquisite” +and “brilliant” corner in decadence which Oscar Wilde made his own: + + “‘Oh! he has not changed,’ said Mr Amarinth. ‘That is so + wonderful. He never develops at all. He alone understands the + beauty of rigidity, the exquisite severity of the statuesque + nature. Men always fall into the absurdity of endeavouring to + develop the mind, to push it violently forward in this direction + or in that. The mind should be receptive, a harp waiting to + catch the winds, a pool ready to be ruffled, not a bustling + busybody, for ever trotting about on the pavement looking for a + new bun shop. It should not deliberately run to seek sensations, + but it should never avoid one; it should never be afraid of one; + it should never put one aside from an absurd sense of right and + wrong. Every sensation is valuable. Sensations are the details + that build up the stories of our lives.’ + + “‘But if we do not choose our sensations carefully, the stories + may be sad, may even end tragically,’ said Lady Locke. + + “‘Oh! I don’t think that matters at all, do you, Mrs Windsor?’ + said Reggie. ‘If we choose carefully, we become deliberate at + once; and nothing is so fatal to personality as deliberation. + When I am good, it is my mood to be good; when I am what is + called wicked, it is my mood to be evil. I never know what I + shall be at a particular moment. Sometimes I like to sit at home + after dinner and read _The Dream of Gerontius_. I love + lentils and cold water. At other times I must drink absinthe, + and hang the night hours with scarlet embroideries. I must have + music, and the sins that march to music. There are moments + when I desire squalor, sinister, mean surroundings, dreariness + and misery. The great unwashed mood is upon me. Then I go out + from luxury. The mind has its West End and its Whitechapel. + The thoughts sit in the park sometimes, but sometimes they go + slumming. They enter narrow courts and rookeries. They rest in + unimaginable dens seeking contrast, and they like the ruffians + whom they meet there, and they hate the notion of policemen + keeping order. The mind governs the body. I never know how I + shall spend an evening till the evening has come. I wait for my + mood.’” + +There is satire so guarded, and lacking just so very dainty a touch of +humour, that the uninitiated might miss the point. But that cannot be +said of the more humorous touch of the author of _The Autobiography +of a Boy_. Esmé Amarinth and Lord Reginald Hastings are cold, +satirical echoes of Lord Henry Wotton and Dorian Gray, or such +prototypes as they may have had in actuality; but the delightful Tubby +of the autobiography is an unforgettably comic exaggeration which might +laugh the veriest and most convinced of decadents back to sanity. The +introduction to the reader is masterly in its sly humour. + + “He was expelled from two private and one public school; but + his private tutor gave him an excellent character, proving that + the rough and ready methods of schoolmasters’ appreciation were + unsuited to the fineness of his nature. As a young boy he was + not remarkable for distinction of the ordinary sort--at his + prescribed studies and at games involving muscular strength and + activity. But in very early life the infinite indulgence of his + smile was famous, and as in after years was often misunderstood; + it was even thought by his schoolfellows that its effect at a + crisis in his career was largely responsible for the rigour + with which he was treated by the authorities; ‘they were not + men of the world,’ was the harshest comment he himself was ever + known to make on them. He spoke with invariable kindness also + of the dons at Oxford (who sent him down in his third year), + complaining only that they had not absorbed the true atmosphere + of the place, which he loved. He was thought eccentric there, + and was well known only in a small and very exclusive set. But + a certain amount of general popularity was secured to him by + the disfavour of the powers, his reputation for wickedness, and + the supposed magnitude of his debts. His theory of life also + compelled him to be sometimes drunk. In his first year he was a + severe ritualist, in his second an anarchist and an atheist, in + his third wearily indifferent to all things, in which attitude + he remained for the two years since he left the university until + now when he is gone from us. His humour of being carried in a + sedan chair, swathed in blankets and reading a Latin poet, from + his rooms to the Turkish bath, is still remembered in college.” + +_The Autobiography of a Boy_ is not, like _The Green Carnation_, a +satire upon the leaders of the decadence; it is a satire upon the +innumerable hangers-on to the movement--who were perhaps the only +real degenerates. Perhaps the Tubby type will be always with us, and +so long as we have our dominions beyond the seas, to which irate +fathers may pack them, all may be well, especially if they depart with +such superbly futile resolves as this Tubby made on the eve of his +emigration to Canada. “My father,” he writes towards the close of his +autobiography, “spoke of an agent whom I was to see on my arrival: +I think he wants me to go into a bank out there. But I shall make +straight for the forests, or the mountains, or whatever they are, and +try to forget. I believe people shoot one another there; I have never +killed a man, and it may be an experience--the lust for slaughter. +They dress picturesquely; probably a red sash will be the keynote of my +scheme.” + +The decadence proper, in this country, was only one of the expressions +of the liveliness of the times. It was the mood of a minority, and of +a minority, perhaps, that was concerned more about its own moods than +about the meaning of life and the use of life. At its worst it was +degenerate in the literal sense--that is to say, weak, invalid, hectic, +trotting with rather sad joy into the _cul de sac_ of conventional +wickedness and peacocking itself with fine phrases and professions of +whimsical daring. As such it was open to satire; as such it would have +suppressed itself sooner or later without the intervention of public +opinion. At its best, even when that best was most artificial and most +exotic, it realised much, if it accomplished little. True it was a +movement of elderly youths who wrote themselves out in a slender volume +or so of hot verse or ornate prose, and slipped away to die in taverns +or gutters--but some of those verses and that prose are woven into the +fabric of English literature. And if it was a movement always being +converted, or on the point of being converted, to the most permanent +form of Christianity, even though its reasons were æsthetic, or due +entirely to a yearning soul-weariness, it succeeded in checking a +brazen rationalism which was beginning to haunt art and life with the +cold shadow of logic. Ernest Dowson’s cry for “Madder music and for +stronger wine,” Arthur Symons’ assertion that “there is no necessary +difference in artistic value between a good poem about a flower in the +hedge and a good poem about the scent in a sachet,” and Oscar Wilde’s +re-assertion of Gautier’s _l’art pour l’art_ (with possibilities +undreamt of by Gautier) are all something more than mere protests +against a stupid philistinism; fundamentally they are expressions not +so much of art as of vision, and as such nothing less than a demand +for that uniting ecstasy which is the essence of human and every other +phase of life. All the cynicisms and petulances and flippancies of +the decadence, the febrile self-assertion, the voluptuousness, the +perversity were, consciously or unconsciously, efforts towards the +rehabilitation of spiritual power. “I see, indeed,” wrote W. B. Yeats, +“in the arts of every country those faint lights and faint colours and +faint outlines and faint energies which many call ‘the decadence,’ +and which I, because I believe that the arts lie dreaming of things +to come, prefer to call the autumn of the body. An Irish poet, whose +rhythms are like the cry of a sea-bird in autumn twilight, has told +its meaning in the line, ‘the very sunlight’s weary, and it’s time to +quit the plough.’ Its importance is great because it comes to us at +the moment when we are beginning to be interested in many things which +positive science, the interpreter of exterior law, has always denied: +communion of mind with mind in thought and without words, foreknowledge +in dreams and in visions, and the coming among us of the dead, and of +much else. We are, it may be, at a crowning crisis of the world, at +the moment when man is about to ascend, with the wealth he has been so +long gathering upon his shoulders, the stairway he has been descending +from the first days.” So it may be that this movement, which accepted +as a badge the reproach of decadence, is the first hot flush of the +only ascendant movement of our times; and that the strange and bizarre +artists who lived tragic lives and made tragic end of their lives, are +the mad priests of that new romanticism whose aim was the transmutation +of vision into personal power. + + + + + CHAPTER IV + + OSCAR WILDE: THE LAST PHASE + + +The singularity of Oscar Wilde has puzzled writers since his death +quite as much as it puzzled the public during the startled years of his +wonderful visit to these glimpses of Philistia; for after all that has +been written about him we are no nearer a convincing interpretation of +his character than we were during the great silence which immediately +followed his trial and imprisonment. Robert H. Sherard’s _Oscar +Wilde: The Story of an Unhappy Friendship_, throws the clear light +of sincerity and eloquence upon his own and his subject’s capacity +for friendship, but little more than that; André Gide has created a +delightful, literary miniature which must always hang on the line in +any gallery of studies of Oscar Wilde, but his work is portraiture +rather than interpretation. For the rest, we have to be content with +such indications of character as may be obtained from the numerous +critical essays which have been published during the last few years, +notable among them being Arthur Ransome’s fine study, and the always +wise commentations of Wilde’s literary executor and editor, Robert +Ross, and the notes and collectanea of Stuart Mason. But whatever +ultimate definition his character may assume in future biography, and +however difficult such definition may be, it is not so hard to define +Oscar Wilde’s position and influence during the last decade of the +nineteenth century, and what proved to be as well the last decade of +his own life. + + [Illustration: OSCAR WILDE (1895) + + _From the Photograph by Ellis & Walery_] + +In the year 1889 Oscar Wilde might have passed away without creating +any further comment than that which is accorded an eccentric poet +who has succeeded in drawing attention to himself and his work by +certain audacities of costume and opinion. His first phase was over, +and he had become an outmoded apostle of an æstheticism which had +already taken the place of a whimsically remembered fad, a fad which, +even then, almost retained its only significance through the medium +of Gilbert and Sullivan’s satirical opera, _Patience_. He was +the man who had evoked merriment by announcing a desire to live up to +his blue-and-white china; he was the man who had created a sort of +good-humoured indignation by expressing displeasure with the Atlantic +Ocean: “I am not exactly pleased with the Atlantic,” he had confessed. +“It is not so majestic as I expected”; and whose later dissatisfaction +with Niagara Falls convinced the United States of America of his +flippancy: “I was disappointed with Niagara. Most people must be +disappointed with Niagara. Every American bride is taken there, and the +sight of the stupendous waterfall must be one of the earliest if not +the keenest disappointments in American married life.” These sayings +were beginning to be remembered dimly, along with the picturesque +memories of a plum-coloured velveteen knickerbocker suit and a famous +stroll down Bond Street as a form of æsthetic propaganda by example. +This memory also was aided by W. S. Gilbert: + + “_If you walk down Piccadilly + With a poppy or a lily + In your mediæval hand...._” + +But certain encounters with Whistler, in which Oscar Wilde felt the +sting of the Butterfly, were remembered more distinctly and with +more satisfaction, with the result that, besides being outmoded, he +became soiled by the charge of plagiarism. “I wish I had said that,” +he remarked once, approving of one of Whistler’s witticisms. “You +will, Oscar; you will!” was the reply. And still more emphatic, the +great painter had said on another occasion: “Oscar has the courage of +the opinions ... of others!” The fact was that the brilliant Oxford +graduate had not yet fulfilled the promise of his youth, of his +first book, and of his own witty audacity. He had achieved notoriety +without fame, and literary reputation without a sufficient means of +livelihood, and so small was his position in letters that, from 1887 +to 1889, we find him eking out a living by editing _The Woman’s +World_ for Messrs Cassell & Co. + +His successes during this period were chiefly in the realms of +friendship, and of this the public knew nothing. Publicly he was +treated with amiable contempt: he was a social jester, an intellectual +buffoon, a _poseur_; food for the self-righteous laughter of the +Philistines; fair quarry for the wits of _Punch_, who did not miss +their chance. Yet during the very years he was controlling editorial +destinies which were more than foreign to his genius, he was taking the +final preparatory steps towards the attractive and sometimes splendid +literary outburst of his last decade. During 1885 and 1890 his unripe +genius was feeling its way ever surer and surer towards that mastery +of technique and increasing thoughtfulness which afterwards displayed +themselves. This was a period of transition and co-ordination. Oscar +Wilde was evolving out of one _bizarrerie_ and passing into +another. And in this evolution he was not only shedding plumes borrowed +from Walter Pater, Swinburne and Whistler, he was retaining such of +them as suited his needs and making them definitely his own. But, +further than that, he was shedding his purely British masters and +allowing himself to fall more directly under the influence of a new +set of masters in France, where he was always at home, and where he +had played the “sedulous ape” to Balzac some years earlier. From time +to time during these years he had polished and engraved and added to +the luxuriant imagery of that masterpiece of baroque poetry, _The +Sphinx_, which was published in 1894 in a beautiful format with +decorations by Charles Ricketts. Essays like “The Truth of Masks” +and “Shakespeare and Stage Costume” appeared in the pages of _The +Nineteenth Century_ in 1885; in other publications appeared such +stories as “The Sphinx without a Secret,” “The Canterville Ghost” +and “Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime,” and in 1888 he issued _The Happy +Prince and Other Tales_. “Pen, Pencil and Poison” appeared in _The +Fortnightly Review_ in 1889, and in the same year _The Nineteenth +Century_ published the first of his two great colloquies, _The +Decay of Lying_. In all of these stories and essays his style was +conquering its weaknesses and achieving the undeniable distinction +which made him the chief force of the renaissance of the early +Nineties. In 1890 his finest colloquy, “The Critic as Artist,” appeared +in _The Nineteenth Century_. Several of the above-named essays and +tales went to the making of two of his most important books, _The +House of Pomegranates_ and _Intentions_, both of which appeared +in the first year of the Nineties, and in the same year he published in +book form the complete version of _The Picture of Dorian Gray_, +thirteen chapters of which had appeared serially in _Lippincott’s +Monthly Magazine_ in the previous year. + +Thus, with the dawn of the Eighteen Nineties, Oscar Wilde came into his +own. _The House of Pomegranates_ alone was sufficient to establish +his reputation as an artist, but the insouciant attitude of the +paradoxical philosopher revealed in _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ +and _Intentions_ stung waning interest in the whilom apostle of +beauty to renewed activity. Shaking off the astonishing reputation +which had won him early notoriety as the posturing advertiser of +himself by virtue of the ideas of others, he arose co-ordinate and +resplendent, an individual and an influence. He translated himself out +of a subject for anecdote into a subject for discussion. And whilst +not entirely abandoning that art of personality which had brought +him notoriety as a conversationalist and dandy in _salon_ and +drawing-room and at the dinner-table, he transmuted the personality +thus cultivated into the more enduring art of literature, and that +brought him fame of which notoriety is but the base metal. For many +years he had looked to the theatre as a further means of expression +and financial gain, and he had tried his ’prentice hand on the drama +with _Vera: or the Nihilists_ in 1882, which was produced +unsuccessfully in America in 1883, and with _The Duchess of +Padua_, written for Mary Anderson and rejected by her about the same +time, and produced without encouraging results in New York in 1891. +There were also two other early plays, _A Florentine Tragedy_, +a fragment only of which remains, and _The Woman Covered with +Jewels_, which seems to have been entirely lost. The failure of +these works to make any sort of impression involves no reflection on +the public, as they are the veriest stuff of the beginner and imitator; +echoes of Sardou and Scribe; romantic costume plays inspired by the +theatre rather than by life, and possessing none of the signs of that +skilled craftsmanship upon which the merely stage-carpentered play +must necessarily depend. But with that change in the whole trend of +his genius which heralded the first year of the Nineties came a change +also in his skill as a playwright. In 1891 he wrote _Salomé_ in +French, afterwards translated into English by Lord Alfred Douglas and +published by the Bodley Head, with illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley, +in 1894. This play would have been produced at the Palace Theatre +in 1892 with Madame Sarah Bernhardt in the cast, had not the censor +intervened. Oscar Wilde achieved his first dramatic success with +_Lady Windermere’s Fan_, produced by George Alexander at the St +James’s Theatre, on 20th February 1892. The success was immediate. Next +year Herbert Beerbohm Tree produced _A Woman of No Importance_ at +the Haymarket Theatre before even more enthusiastic audiences. In 1895 +_An Ideal Husband_ was produced at the same theatre in January, +and, in February, _The Importance of Being Earnest_ was produced +at the St James’s. + +Oscar Wilde had now reached the age of forty-one and the height of +his fame and power. “The man who can dominate a London dinner-table +can dominate the world,” he had said. He had dominated many a London +dinner-table; he now dominated the London stage. He was a monarch +in his own sphere, rich, famous, popular; looked up to as a master +by the younger generation, courted by the fashionable world, loaded +with commissions by theatrical managers, interviewed, paragraphed and +pictured by the Press, and envied by the envious and the incompetent. +All the flattery and luxury of success were his, and his luxuriant +and applause-loving nature appeared to revel in the glittering surf +of conquest like a joyous bather in a sunny sea. But it was only a +partial victory. The apparent capitulation of the upper and middle +classes was illusory, and even the man in the street who heard about +him and wondered was moved by an uneasy suspicion that all was +not well. For, in spite of the flattery and the amusement, Oscar +Wilde never succeeded in winning popular respect. His intellectual +playfulness destroyed popular faith in his sincerity, and the British +people have still to learn that one can be as serious in one’s play +with ideas as in one’s play with a football. The danger of his position +was all the more serious because those who were ready to laugh with +him were never tired of laughing at him. This showed that lack of +confidence which is the most fertile ground of suspicion, and Wilde +was always suspected in this country even before the rumours which +culminated in his trial and imprisonment began to filter through the +higher strata of society to the lower. It sufficed that he was strange +and clever and seemingly happy and indifferent to public opinion. +This popular suspicion is summarised clearly, and with the sort of +disrespect from which he never escaped even in his hour of triumph, +in an article in _Pearson’s Weekly_ for 27th May 1893, written +immediately after the success of _Lady Windermere’s Fan_ and _A +Woman of No Importance_: + + “Where he does excel is in affectation. His mode of life, his + manner of speech, his dress, his views, his work, are all masses + of affectation. Affectation has become a second nature to him, + and it would probably now be utterly impossible for him to + revert to the original Oscar that lies beneath it all. In fact, + probably none of his friends have ever had an opportunity of + finding out what manner of man the real Oscar is.... So long as + he remains an amiable eccentricity and the producer of amusing + trifles, however, one cannot be seriously angry with him. So + far, it has never occurred to any reasonable person to take him + seriously, and the storms of ridicule to which he has exposed + himself have prevented his becoming a real nuisance. For the + present, however, we may content ourselves with the reflection + that there is no serious danger to be apprehended to the State + from the vagaries of a butterfly.” + +The above may be taken as a fair example of the attitude of the popular +Press towards Oscar Wilde, and the same sentiments were expressed, +varying only in degrees of literary polish, in many directions, even at +a time when the new spirit of comedy he had introduced into the British +theatre was giving unbounded delight to a vast throng of fashionable +playgoers; for these plays had not to create audiences for themselves, +like the plays of Bernard Shaw; they were immediately acclaimed, and +Wilde at once took rank with popular playwrights like Sydney Grundy and +Pinero. + +There were of course many who admired him; and he always inspired +friendship among his intimates. All who have written of him during his +earlier period and during the early days of his triumph refer to his +joyous and resplendent personality, his fine scholarship, his splendid +manners and conversational gifts, his good humour and his lavish +generosity. André Gide gives us many glimpses of Wilde both before and +after his downfall, one of which reveals him as table-talker: + + “I had heard him talked about at Stéphane Mallarmé’s house, + where he was described as a brilliant conversationalist, and + I expressed a wish to know him, little hoping that I should + ever do so. A happy chance, or rather a friend, gave me the + opportunity, and to him I made known my desire. Wilde was + invited to dinner. It was at a restaurant. We were a party + of four, but three of us were content to listen. Wilde did + not converse--he told tales. During the whole meal he hardly + stopped. He spoke in a slow, musical tone, and his very voice + was wonderful. He knew French almost perfectly, but pretended, + now and then, to hesitate for a word to which he wanted to call + our attention. He had scarcely any accent, at least only what + it pleased him to affect when it might give a somewhat new or + strange appearance to a word--for instance, he used purposely + to pronounce _scepticisme_ as _skepticisme_. The + stories he told us without a break that evening were not of his + best. Uncertain of his audience, he was testing us, for, in + his wisdom, or perhaps in his folly, he never betrayed himself + into saying anything which he thought would not be to the taste + of his hearers; so he doled out food to each according to his + appetite. Those who expected nothing from him got nothing, or + only a little light froth, and as at first he used to give + himself up to the task of amusing, many of those who thought + they knew him will have known him only as the amuser.” + +With the progress of his triumph as a successful playwright, his +friends observed a coarsening of his appearance and character, and +he lost his powers of conversation. Robert H. Sherard met him during +the Christmas season of 1894 and described his appearance as bloated. +His face seemed to have lost its spiritual beauty, and he was oozing +with material prosperity. At this time serious rumours about his +private life and habits became more persistent in both London and +Paris, and countenance was lent to them by the publication of _The +Green Carnation_, which, although making no direct charge, hinted +at strange sins. Oscar Wilde knew that his conduct must lead to +catastrophe, although many of his friends believed in his innocence +to the end. André Gide met him in Algiers just before the catastrophe +happened. Wilde explained that he was fleeing from art: + + “He spoke of returning to London, as a well-known peer was + insulting him, challenging him, and taunting him with running + away. + + “‘But if you go back what will happen?’ I asked him. ‘Do you + know the risk you are running?’ + + “‘It is best never to know,’ he answered. ‘My friends are + extraordinary--they beg me to be careful. Careful? But how can I + be careful? That would be a backward step. I must go on as far + as possible. I cannot go much further. Something is bound to + happen ... something else.’ + + “Here he broke off, and the next day he left for England.” + +Almost immediately after his arrival he brought an action for criminal +libel against the Marquis of Queensberry and, upon losing the case, +was arrested, and charged under the 11th Section of the Criminal Law +Amendment Act, and sentenced to two years’ penal servitude. During +his imprisonment he wrote _De Profundis_, in the form of a long +letter, addressed but not delivered, to Lord Alfred Douglas, a part +of which was published in 1905, and after his release he wrote _The +Ballad of Reading Gaol_, published, under a pseudonym, “C. 3. 3.” +(his prison number), by Leonard Smithers, and he contributed two +letters on the conditions of prison life, “The Cruelties of Prison +Life,” and “Don’t Read this if you Want to be Happy To-day,” to _The +Daily Chronicle_ in 1897 and 1898. These were his last writings. + +After leaving prison he lived for a while, under the assumed name of +“Sebastian Melmoth,” at the Hôtel de la Plage, and later at the Villa +Bourget, Berneval-sur-Mer, near Dieppe, where he wrote _The Ballad +of Reading Gaol_, and the prison letters, and where he contemplated +writing a play called _Ahab and Jezebel_. This play he hoped +would be his passport to the world again. But a new restlessness +overcame him, and all his good resolutions turned to dust. For a while +he travelled, visiting Italy, the south of France and Switzerland, +eventually settling in Paris, where he died, in poverty and a penitent +Catholic, on 30th November 1900. He was buried in the Bagneux Cemetery, +but on 20th July 1909 his remains were removed to Père Lachaise. + +It is too soon, perhaps, even now, to set a final value upon the work +of Oscar Wilde. Time, although not an infallible critic, is already +winnowing the chaff from the grain, and almost with the passing of +each year we are better able to recognise the more permanent essences +of his literary remains. It is inevitable in his case, where the +glamour of personality added so significantly to the character of his +work, that Time should insist upon being something more than a casual +arbiter. In proof of this the recollection of so much futile criticism +of Wilde cannot be overlooked. Both the man and his work have suffered +depreciations which amount to defamation, and appraisals which can only +be described as silly. But finally he would seem in many instances +to have suffered more at the hands of his friends than his enemies. +There have been, to be sure, several wise estimations of his genius, +even in this country, notably those of Arthur Ransome and the not +altogether unprovocative essay of Arthur Symons, entitled “An Artist in +Attitudes”; and the various prefaces and notes contributed by Robert +Ross to certain of the volumes in the complete edition of the works +are, of course, of great value. But, as the incidents associated with +the life and times of Wilde recede further into the background of the +mental picture which inevitably forms itself about any judgment of his +work, we shall be able to obtain a less biased view. Even then, our +perspective may be wrong, for this difficulty of personality is not +only dominant, but it may be essential. + +The personality of Oscar Wilde, luxuriant, piquant and insolent as +it was, is sufficiently emphatic to compel attention so long as +interest in his ideas or his works survives. Indeed, it may never be +quite possible to separate such a man from such work. It is certainly +impossible to do so now. With many writers, perhaps the majority, it +requires no effort to forget the author in the book, because literature +has effectually absorbed personality, or all that was distinctive +of the author’s personality. With Oscar Wilde it is otherwise. His +books can never be the abstract and brief chronicles of himself; for, +admittedly on his part, and recognisably on the part of others, he +put even more distinction into his life than he did into his art. Not +always the worthier part of himself; for that often, and more often +in his last phase, was reserved for his books. But there is little +doubt that the complete Oscar Wilde was the living and bewildering +personality which rounded itself off and blotted itself out in a +tragedy which was all the more nihilistic because of its abortive +attempt at recuperation--an attempt which immortalised itself in the +repentant sincerity of _De Profundis_, but almost immediately fell +forward into an anti-climax of tragedy more pitiful than the first. + +So far as we are able to judge, and with the aid of winnowing Time, it +is already possible to single out the small contribution made by Oscar +Wilde to poetry. The bulk of his poetry is negligible. It represents +little more than the ardent outpourings of a young man still deeply +indebted to his masters. One or two lyrics will certainly survive in +the anthologies of the future, but if Wilde were dependent upon his +verses for future acceptance his place would be among the minor poets. +There is, however, a reservation to be made even here, as there is in +almost every generalisation about this elusive personality; he wrote +three poems, two towards the close of his earlier period, _The +Harlot’s House_ and _The Sphinx_, and one near the close of his +life, _The Ballad of Reading Gaol_, which bear every indication of +permanence. The two former will appeal to those who respond to strange +and exotic emotions, the latter to those who are moved by the broader +current of average human feeling. His last poem, and last work, does +not reveal merely Oscar Wilde’s acceptance of a realistic attitude, +it reveals what might have been, had he lived to pursue the matter +further, conversion to a natural and human acceptation of life. The +sense of simplicity in art which previously he had been content to +use as a refuge for the deliberately complex, as a sort of intensive +culture for modern bewilderment, is now used with even greater effect +in the cause of the most obvious of human emotions--pity: + + “I never saw a man who looked + With such a wistful eye + Upon that little tent of blue + Which prisoners call the sky, + And at every drifting cloud that went + With sails of silver by. + + I walked, with other souls in pain, + Within another ring, + And was wondering if the man had done + A great or little thing, + When a voice behind me whispered low, + ‘_That fellow’s got to swing._’” + +There is none of the old earnest insincerity in this poem, and only +occasionally does the poet fall back into the old _bizarrerie_. +Had _The Ballad of Reading Gaol_ been written a hundred years ago, +it would have been printed as a broadside and sold in the streets by +the balladmongers; it is so common as that, and so great as that. But +there is nothing common, and nothing great, in the universal sense, +about the two earlier poems. These are distinguished only as the +expressions of unusual vision and unusual mood; they are decadent in +so far as they express emotions that are sterile and perverse. They +are decadent in the sense that Baudelaire was decadent, from whom they +inherit almost everything save the English in which they are framed. +But few will doubt their claim to a place in a curious artistic niche. +_The Sphinx_, a masterly fantasy of bemused artificiality, is +really a poetic design, an arabesque depending for effect upon hidden +rhymes and upon strange fancies, expressing sensations which have +hitherto been enshrined in art rather than in life: + + “Your eyes are like fantastic moons that shiver in some stagnant + lake, + Your tongue is like some scarlet snake that dances to fantastic + tunes, + + Your pulse makes poisonous melodies, and your black throat is like + the hole + Left by some torch or burning coal on Saracenic tapestries.” + +Similarly, _The Harlot’s House_ interprets a mood that is so +sinister and impish and unusual as to express disease rather than +health: + + “Sometimes a horrible marionette + Came out, and smoked its cigarette + Upon the steps like a live thing. + + Then turning to my love, I said, + ‘The dead are dancing with the dead, + The dust is whirling with the dust.’ + + But she--she heard the violin, + And left my side, and entered in: + Love passed into the house of lust.” + +Wilde developed this abnormal attitude towards life in _The Picture +of Dorian Gray_ and in _Salomé_, and in each of these prose +works he endeavours, often with success, to stimulate feelings that +are usually suppressed, by means of what is strange and rare in art +and luxury. It is not the plot that you think about whilst reading +_Salomé_, but the obvious desire of the author to tune the senses +and the mind to a preposterous key: + + “I have jewels hidden in this place--jewels that your mother + even has never seen; jewels that are marvellous. I have a collar + of pearls, set in four rows. They are like unto moons chained + with rays of silver. They are like fifty moons caught in a + golden net. On the ivory of her breast a queen has worn it. + Thou shalt be as fair as a queen when thou wearest it. I have + amethysts of two kinds, one that is black like wine, and one + that is red like wine which has been coloured with water. I have + topazes yellow as are the eyes of tigers, and topazes that are + pink as the eyes of a wood-pigeon, and green topazes that are as + the eyes of cats. I have opals that burn always, with an icelike + flame, opals that make sad men’s minds, and are fearful of the + shadows. I have onyxes like the eyeballs of a dead woman. I have + moonstones that change when the moon changes, and are wan when + they see the sun. I have sapphires big like eggs, and as blue + as blue flowers. The sea wanders within them and the moon comes + never to trouble the blue of their waves. I have chrysolites + and beryls and chrysoprases and rubies. I have sardonyx and + hyacinth stones, and stones of chalcedony, and I will give them + all to you, all, and other things will I add to them. The King + of the Indies has but even now sent me four fans fashioned from + the feathers of parrots, and the King of Numidia a garment of + ostrich feathers. I have a crystal, into which it is not lawful + for a woman to look, nor may young men behold it until they + have been beaten with rods. In a coffer of nacre I have three + wondrous turquoises. He who wears them on his forehead can + imagine things which are not, and he who carries them in his + hand can make women sterile. These are great treasures above + all price. They are treasures without price. But this is not + all. In an ebony coffer I have two cups of amber, that are like + apples of gold. If an enemy pour poison into these cups they + become like an apple of silver. In a coffer encrusted with amber + I have sandals encrusted with glass. I have mantles that have + been brought from the land of the Seres, and bracelets decked + about with carbuncles and with jade that came from the city of + Euphrates.... What desirest thou more than this, Salomé? Tell me + the thing that thou desirest, and I will give it thee. All that + thou askest I will give thee, save one thing. I will give thee + all that is mine, save one life. I will give the mantle of the + High Priest. I will give thee the veil of the sanctuary.” + +The mere naming of jewels and treasures in a highly wrought prose-poem +might in itself be as innocent as one of Walt Whitman’s catalogues +of implements, but even removed from its context there is something +unusual and even sinister about Herod’s offerings to Salomé. The whole +work is coloured by a hunger for sensation that has all the sterility +of an excessive civilisation. + +In the essays collected in the book called _Intentions_, Oscar +Wilde has let us into the secret which produced these works. That +secret is an attempt to push Gautier’s idea of art for art’s sake, +and Whistler’s idea of art as Nature’s exemplar, to their logical +conclusions. He outdoes his masters with the obvious intention of +going one better. Throughout the whole of his life he was filled with +a boyish enthusiasm which took the form of self-delight. “His attitude +was dramatic,” says Arthur Symons, “and the whole man was not so much +a personality as an attitude. Without being a sage, he maintained the +attitude of a sage; without being a poet, he maintained the attitude +of a poet; without being an artist he maintained the attitude of an +artist.” It is certainly true that his intellect was dramatic, and it +is equally true that he was fond of adopting attitudes, but it is far +from true to name three of his favourite attitudes and to say that +these began and ended in the mere posture. For Oscar Wilde was both +poet and sage and artist. He may not have been a great poet, he may not +have been a great sage, he may not, which is more doubtful, have been +a great artist, but the fact remains that the attitudes representing +those faculties and adopted by him were the symbols of demonstrable +phases of his genius. Whilst always longing to express himself in +literary forms, and knowing himself to be capable of doing so, he found +it easier to express himself through the living personality. Writing +bored him, and those who knew him are agreed that he did not put the +best of himself into his work. “It is personalities,” he said, “not +principles, that move the age.” + +Throughout the whole of his life he tried to live up, not to his +blue-and-white china, but to an idea of personality; and the whole of +his philosophy is concerned with an attempt to prove that personality, +even though it destroy itself, should be the final work of art. Indeed, +in his opinion, art itself was nothing but the medium of personality. +His attitudes thus become details in the art of personality. If they +had no basis in fact, Oscar Wilde would have been no more than an actor +playing a part in a work of art, but although he played, played at +intellectual dandy, much as a boy will play at pirates, he was playing +a part in the drama of life; and he adopted the attitude of dandy in +response to as real an emotion at least as that which inspires a boy +to adopt the attitude of pirate. What he seemed to be doing all the +time was translating life into art through himself. His books were +but incidents in this process. He always valued life more than art, +and only appreciated the latter when its reflex action contributed +something to his sensations; but because he had thought himself into +the position of one who transmutes life into art, he fell into the +error of imagining art to be more important than life. And art for him +was not only those formal and plastic things which we call the fine +arts; it embraced all luxurious artificialities. “All art is quite +useless,” he said. Such an attitude was in itself artificial; but with +Oscar Wilde this artificialism lacked any progressive element: it was +sufficient in itself; in short, it ended in itself, and not in any +addition to personal power. Oscar Wilde never, for instance, dreamt of +evolving into a god; he dreamt of evolving into a master of sensation, +a harp responding luxuriously to every impression. This he became, or +rather, this he always was, and it explained the many quite consistent +charges of plagiarism that were always being brought against him, and +it may explain his insensate plunge into forbidden sin, his conversion +and his relapse. He lived for the mood, but whatever that mood brought +him, whether it was the ideas of others or the perversities of what +is impish in life, he made them his own. What he stole from Whistler, +Pater, Balzac, Gautier and Baudelaire, whilst remaining recognisably +derivative, had added unto them something which their originals did +not possess. He mixed pure wines, as it were, and created a new +complex beverage, not perhaps for quaffing, but a sort of liqueur, or, +rather, a cocktail, with a piquant and original flavour not ashamed of +acknowledging the flavours of its constituents. + +This, then, was in reality an attitude towards life, and not an +empty pose. I do not think that Oscar Wilde had any hope of finding +anything absolute; he was born far too late in the nineteenth century +for that. He had no purpose in life save play. He was the playboy of +the Nineties; and, like the hero of John Millington Synge’s drama, +he was subject to the intimidation of flattery. Naturally inclined +to go one better than his master, he was also inclined to please his +admirers and astonish his enemies by going one better than himself, +and as this one better generally meant in his later life one more +extravagance, one further abandonment, it resulted, from the point +of view of convention, in his going always one worse. Repetition of +this whim turned perversity into a habit, and the growing taunt of +those who knew or suspected his serious perversions drove him into +the final perversion of deliberately courting tragedy, much as the +mouse is charmed back into the clutches of the cat after it has +apparently been given a loophole of retreat. It would not have been +cowardice if Oscar Wilde had escaped while he had the chance, and it +was not bravery that made him blind to that chance; he was bemused +by his own attitude. Afterwards, he learnt the meaning of pain, and +he arrived at a conclusion similar to that of Nietzsche. But it was +not until afterwards. And although he found consolation in Christian +mysticism whilst in prison, and again on his deathbed, we shall never +know with what subtle joy he permitted his own destruction during the +intervening period. Looked at from such a point of view, his books help +in explaining the man. The best of them, _Intentions_, _The House of +Pomegranates_, _The Importance of Being Earnest_, _The Soul of Man_, +_The Ballad of Reading Gaol_, _De Profundis_, and a handful of epigrams +and short parables which he called _Prose Poems_, must, it seems to +me, take a definite place in English literature as the expression and +explanation of the type Wilde represented. + +This type was not created by Oscar Wilde: it was very general +throughout Europe at the close of the last century, and he represented +only one version of it. Probably to himself he imagined himself to +approximate somewhat to the cynical idlers of his plays: Lord Goring +in _An Ideal Husband_, Lord Darlington in _Lady Windermere’s +Fan_, Lord Illingworth in _A Woman of No Importance_ and +Algernon Moncrieff in _The Importance of Being Earnest_ may be +partial portraits of the sort of personal impression their author +imagined he was creating in the fashionable world. But he drew fuller +portraits of himself in his novel. Lord Henry Wotton and Dorian Gray +represent two sides of Oscar Wilde; they are both experimenters in +life, both epicureans and both seeking salvation by testing life even +to destruction. _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ is really a moral +tale, and that also is characteristic of the genius of Oscar Wilde, +for at no period of his life had he the courage of his amorality. He +was always haunted by the still small voice which broke bounds and +expressed itself freely in _De Profundis_. And whilst reading his +books, or listening to his plays, one cannot help feeling that their +very playfulness is but the cloak of tragedy. The decadent, weary with +known joys and yearning for new sensations, perpetually being rebuked +by the clammy hand of exhausted desire, must needs laugh. Oscar Wilde +laughed, and made us laugh, not by his wit so much as by his humour, +that humour which dances over his plays and epigrams with the flutter +of sheet lightning, compelling response where response is possible, +but always inconsequent and always defying analysis. It reached its +height in _The Importance of Being Earnest_, a comedy so novel, +so irresistibly amusing and so perfect in its way that discussion of +it ends in futility, like an attempt to explain the bouquet of old +Cognac or the iridescence of opals. It is the moonshine of genius. The +still small voice in him, of which his lambent humour is the mask, +is stronger in _The Soul of Man_ and _The Ballad of Reading +Gaol_, and it is quite possible that had he lived the even life +that he began to live on the bleak coast of Normandy after his release +from prison, this underlying strain in his character would have turned +him into a social reformer. His harrowing letters on prison conditions +point to some such destiny especially when associated with his +philosophic dash into the realm of Socialism. As it was, such humane +zeal as he possessed ended on the one side in sublime pity and on the +other in the dream of a Utopia for dandies. + +Dandy of intellect, dandy of manners, dandy of dress, Oscar Wilde +strutted through the first half of the Nineties and staggered through +the last. So pleased was he with himself, so interested was he in the +pageant of life, that he devoted his genius, in so far as it could be +public, to telling people all about it. His genius expressed itself +best in stories and conversation, and he was always the centre of each. +The best things in his plays are the conversations: the flippancies +of dandies and the garrulities of delightful shameless dowagers. His +best essays are colloquies; those that are not depend for effect +upon epigrams and aphorisms, originally dropped by himself in the +dining-rooms and _salons_ of London and Paris. When he was not +conversing he was telling stories, and these stories, perhaps, the +_Prose Poems_, _The House of Pomegranates_ and _The Happy +Prince_, will outlive even his wittiest paradox. _Salomé_ is +more a story, a “prose-poem,” than a play, and it is more, to use for +once the method of inversion in which he delighted, an epigram than a +story. One can imagine the glee with which Oscar Wilde worked up to the +anti-climax, to the moment after Salomé has kissed the dead mouth of +Jokanaan, and Herod has turned round and said: “Kill that woman.” One +can taste his own delight whilst writing the final stage instruction: +“The soldiers run forward and crush beneath their shields Salomé, +daughter of Herodias, Princess of Judæa.” But more easily still can one +imagine this remarkable man for ever telling himself an eternal tale in +which he himself is hero. + + + + + CHAPTER V + + AUBREY BEARDSLEY + + +The appearance of Aubrey Beardsley in 1893 was the most extraordinary +event in English art since the appearance of William Blake a little +more than a hundred years earlier. With that, however, or almost so, +the resemblance ends. Blake was born “out of his due time,” not alone +because he baffled the understanding of his age, but because his age +scarcely knew of his existence. Beardsley, on the other hand, was +born into an age of easy publicity; and that circumstance, combined +with the fact that he was so peculiarly of his period, instantly made +him a centre of discussion, a subject for regard and reprehension. +Temporally he was so appropriate that an earlier appearance would have +been as premature as a later would have been tardy. It was inevitable +that he should have come with _The Yellow Book_ and gone with +_The Savoy_. The times demanded his presence. He was as necessary +a corner-stone of the Temple of the Perverse as Oscar Wilde, but, +unlike that great literary figure of the decadence in England, his +singularity makes him a prisoner for ever in those Eighteen Nineties +of which he was so inevitable an expression. He alone of all the +interesting figures of those years is almost as sterile in art as he +is local in point of time. Oscar Wilde added delicate raillery and +novel lightness to drama, and a new accent to conversation; Francis +Thompson reintroduced Christian mysticism into English poetry; Ernest +Dowson linked an eternal and bitter anguish of the soul with modern +emotion; and Arthur Symons, Max Beerbohm, John Davidson, G. S. Street +and Richard Le Gallienne reasserted the significance of urbane things; +all revealed something that was universal--if only the universality of +taverns and courtesans. But Aubrey Beardsley is the unique expression +of the most unique mood of the Nineties, a mood which was so limited +that his art would have been untrue had it been either imitable or +universal. As a matter of fact, it is neither; all who have called +Beardsley master have destroyed themselves, and his work was archaic +even before he died. + +As a man, or rather as a boy--for although Beardsley reached manhood +in years he hardly lost a certain boyish attitude towards life--he +was admired for his gaiety of heart, unabashed joy in his work, and +good-fellowship. He was born at Brighton on 21st August 1872, and +died of tuberculosis in 1898. From his seventh year his health was +delicate, and pulmonary troubles began to be feared as early as 1881. +He had passed through the first stages of education before this, first +at a kindergarten at Brighton, and then at a preparatory school at +Hurstpierpoint. But with the appearance of lung trouble he was removed +to Epsom. The first artistic influence of his early life was music, +and so proficient did he become as an executant that, in 1883, he +joined his family in London, and appeared on the concert platform with +his sister (Miss Mabel Beardsley, who became an actress) as an infant +prodigy. His real tastes, however, were literary, and, although as a +child almost he could talk with something like authority upon music, +he preferred to read books and dream in words and phrases. In 1884 he +and his sister were living in Brighton again, and he began to attend +the Brighton Grammar School as a day boy. Although his tastes ran in +the direction of books, he had innate skill with the pencil, and was +influenced by the drawings of Kate Greenaway. When quite young he made +a little money by decorating menu and invitation cards, but his drawing +first attracted particular attention at the Grammar School, where the +masters were interested and amused by his caricatures of themselves, +and his earliest work thus came to appear in _Past and Present_, +the magazine of that school. In 1888 he entered an architect’s office +in London, but apparently remained there for no great length of time, +for in 1889 he was employed as a clerk in the Guardian Life & Fire +Assurance Company. Whilst in that office he devoted his spare time to +reading and drawing, and his passion for books led him, as it has led +many another city clerk of literary tastes, to the well-known bookshop +of Messrs Jones & Evans, in Queen Street, Cheapside, and here he made +the acquaintance of Mr Frederick H. Evans, whose enthusiasm for his +drawings was the herald of Beardsley’s fame. Thus with the dawn of the +Nineties came whispers of the appearance of a new and remarkable +artist. + + [Illustration: AUBREY BEARDSLEY + + _By Max Beerbohm_] + +Through the intervention of Mr Evans, Aubrey Beardsley came into +contact with the publishing world, and Mr J. M. Dent commissioned +him to illustrate the now famous two-volume edition of the _Morte +d’Arthur_, the publication of which in monthly parts, beginning June +1893, was Beardsley’s debut as a book illustrator. About this time he +met Joseph Pennell, who introduced him to the public in an enthusiastic +article, illustrated by several characteristic drawings, in the first +number of _The Studio_ (April 1893), the cover of which was also +designed by Beardsley. Interest in the new artist was immediate and +clamorous; and his work began to appear in many books. Messrs Dent & +Company, Messrs Elkin Mathews & John Lane, Messrs Longmans & Company +and Mr David Nutt, all published books decorated by him. In 1894 he was +appointed art editor of _The Yellow Book_, and then the “Beardsley +Craze” began in earnest. Beardsley posters appeared on the hoardings, +and the man-in-the-street became further acquainted with the work of +this marvellous boy through the columns of the popular newspapers and +magazines. The “Beardsley Woman” was an absorbing topic; and the young +artist was belauded and belittled to exasperation. + +Never before did an artist achieve such immediate fame. He himself +appreciated it all with unabashed delight, and worked harder and +harder to meet the increasing demands upon his genius. Conscious, as +John Keats had been, that “mortality weighed heavy upon him,” he yet +clung to life with the fatal hopefulness of the consumptive. He is +said also to have worked feverishly, as though conscious of pending +doom, but, although fully aware of his fatal disease, it was not until +the last year of his life that he realised the nearness of death. As +late as September 1897, when he had actually got as far as France on +what proved to be his funeral journey to the south, he was buoyed up +by the hope of a complete recovery. “Dr P. has just put me through a +very careful examination,” he wrote to the Rev. John Gray. “He thinks I +have made quite a marvellous improvement since he saw me at the Windsor +Hotel, and that if I continue to take care I shall get quite well and +have a new life before me.” + +A little more than seven months before, Aubrey Beardsley had been +received into the Church of Rome, and his published letters, covering +the period of preparation before his conversion, and closing a little +less than three weeks before his death, are full of a sweetness which +is heroic in so passionate a lover of life. In the introduction to +_The Last Letters of Aubrey Beardsley_, those “noted letters” in +which, as Arthur Symons has said, “we see a man die,” Father Gray says: +“Aubrey Beardsley might, had he lived, have risen, whether through his +art or otherwise, spiritually to a height from which he could command +the horizon he was created to scan. As it was, the long anguish, the +increasing bodily helplessness, the extreme necessity in which someone +else raises one’s hand, turns one’s head, showed the slowly dying +man things he had not seen before. He came face to face with the old +riddle of life and death; the accustomed supports and resources of his +being were removed; his soul, thus denuded, discovered needs unstable +desires had hitherto obscured; he submitted, like Watteau his master, +to the Catholic Church.” He was buried after a Mass at the cathedral at +Mentone, in the hillside Catholic cemetery of that town; his grave on +the edge of the hill is hewn out of the rock; “a true sepulchre, with +an arched opening and a stone closing it.” + +It is recorded that Aubrey Beardsley was greatly impressed by the +wordless play, _L’Enfant Prodigue_, which delighted the playgoers +of the Nineties, and one can well imagine how the youthful artist +found in the spacious silences of that novel production an echo of +himself. Doubtless he saw in it something of his own vision of life +translated into another form, but doubtless he felt also, but this +time subconsciously, a response to that Pierrot note in his own soul +which has been indicated by Arthur Symons. But Beardsley was something +more than that, something more purposeful, although his early death +left his purpose unrealised. His youth made him the infant prodigy +of the decadence; and the Pierrot in him was an attitude, and even +then it was a bigger attitude than that of its namesake. Innocence +always frustrated the desires of Pierrot and left him desolate, but +Aubrey Beardsley introduced into art the desolation of experience, the +_ennui_ of sin. It required the intensity of youth to express such +an attitude, although the attitude savours not of the conventional idea +of youth, but of the conventional idea of experienced age. Perhaps it +is only the young who are ever really morbid, for youth more than age +regrets that “spring should vanish with the rose.” But youth that has +heard the beatings of the wings of death, as Beardsley must have done, +grows so hungry for the joys and beauties of spring that it becomes +aged by the very intensity of desire. Keats, like Aubrey Beardsley, +suffered such hunger, because, like Beardsley, whom he resembles so +much temperamentally, he loved as he said “the mighty abstract idea of +Beauty in all things.” And with both poet and artist there was acute +consciousness of the evanescence of Beauty: + + “Beauty that must die; + And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips + Bidding adieu, and aching Pleasure nigh, + Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips.” + +But that reality is not only the attitude of hypersensitive youth +towards life; it is the attitude of self-conscious civilisation. And +how like modern civilisation is Max Beerbohm’s summary of Aubrey +Beardsley’s temperament? “He knew that life was short, and so he +loved every hour of it with a kind of jealous intensity. He had that +absolute power of ‘living in the moment’ which is given only to the +doomed man--that kind of self-conscious happiness, the delight in +still clinging to the thing whose worth you have only realised through +the knowledge that it will soon be taken from you. For him, as for +the schoolboy whose holidays are near their close, every hour--every +minute, even--had its value. His drawing, his compositions in prose +and in verse, his reading--these things were not enough to satisfy his +strenuous demands on life. He was himself 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. His restlessness was, I suppose, one +of the symptoms of his malady. He was always most content where there +was the greatest noise and bustle, the largest number of people, and +the most brilliant light.” That is a picture of the age as well as of +its epitome, Aubrey Beardsley. + +In spite, however, of this hunger for life, this restless desire for +more and more vitality, he contrived to retain a natural sweetness in +his dealings with his fellow-men which has left many happy memories, +some of which have been recorded. When Robert Ross first met Beardsley +in 1892 he was so overcome by his “strange and fascinating originality” +that he neglected the portfolio of drawings which the young artist +had with him. “He was an intellectual Marcellus suddenly matured,” +says this chronicler. “His rather long brown hair, instead of being +_ébouriffé_, as the ordinary genius is expected to wear it, was +brushed smoothly and flatly on his head and over part of his immensely +high and narrow brow. His face even then was terribly drawn and +emaciated. Except in his manner, I do not think his general appearance +altered very much in spite of his ill-health and suffering, borne with +such unparalleled resignation and fortitude; he always had a most +delightful smile, both for friends and strangers.” + +Arthur Symons suggests that any eccentricities or difficulties of +character possessed by Beardsley were easily forgotten in his personal +charm: “He seemed to have read everything, and had his preferences +as adroitly in order, as wittily in evidence, as almost any man of +letters; indeed, he seemed to know more, and was a sounder critic, +of books than of pictures; with perhaps a deeper feeling for music +than for either. His conversation had a peculiar kind of brilliance, +different in order but scarcely inferior in quality to that of any +other contemporary master of that art; a salt, whimsical dogmatism, +equally full of convinced egoism and of imperturbable keen-sightedness. +Generally choosing to be paradoxical and vehement on behalf of any +enthusiasm of the mind, he was the dupe of none of his own statements, +or indeed of his own enthusiasms, and, really, very coldly impartial. +I scarcely accept even his own judgment of himself, in spite of his +petulant, amusing self-assertion, so full of the childishness of +genius. He thought, and was right in thinking, very highly of himself; +he admired himself enormously; but his intellect would never allow +itself to be deceived even about his own accomplishments.” “I remember +that when I first saw him,” says Max Beerbohm, “I thought I had never +seen so utterly frail a creature--he looked more like a ghost than +a living man. He was then, I believe, already in an advanced stage +of pulmonary consumption. When I came to know him better, I realised +that it was only by sheer force of nerves that he contrived to sustain +himself. He was always, whenever one saw him, in the highest spirits, +full of fun and of fresh theories about life and art. But one could not +help feeling that as soon as he were alone he would sink down, fatigued +and listless, with all the spirit gone out of him. One felt that his +gaiety resulted from a kind of pride, and was only assumed, as one +should say in company.” Another friend of the artist, H. C. Marillier, +writes: “Poor Beardsley! His death has removed a quaint and amiable +personality from among us; a butterfly who played at being serious, and +yet a busy worker who played at being a butterfly. Outwardly, he lived +in the sunshine, airing bright wings. Inwardly no one can tell how he +suffered or strove. It is well to avoid self-righteousness in judging +him. As the wise pastrycook says in _Cyrano_, + + “‘_fourmi n’insulte pas ces divines cigales_.’” + +But there is little doubt that Aubrey Beardsley did take his work very +seriously, boyish as he was, dandy as he was, butterfly as he was. He +loved praise and approbation as all men do; but when he won the frank +appreciation of an acknowledged master, such as Whistler, as eventually +he did, Beardsley showed his own sincerity and earnestness by tears. +The story is told very simply and very beautifully by Elizabeth and +Joseph Pennell in _The Life of James McNeill Whistler_: + + “Whistler met Beardsley and got to like not only him, as + everybody did, but his work. One night when Whistler was with + us, Beardsley turned up, as always when he went to see anyone, + with his portfolio of his latest work under his arm. This time + it held the illustrations for _The Rape of the Lock_, + which he had just made. Whistler, who always saw everything + that was being done, had seen _The Yellow Book_, started + in 1894, and he disliked it as much as he then disliked + Beardsley, who was the art editor; but he had also seen the + illustrations to _Salomé_, disliking them too, probably + because of Oscar Wilde; he knew many of the other drawings, one + of which, whether intentionally or unintentionally, was more + or less a reminiscence of Mrs Whistler, and he no doubt knew + that Beardsley had made a caricature of him which a follower + carefully left in a cab. When Beardsley opened the portfolio, + and began to show us _The Rape of the Lock_, Whistler + 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--I mean it.’” + + [Illustration: THE RAPE OF THE LOCK + + _By Aubrey Beardsley_] + +Leaving aside the prodigious elements in the life and work of Aubrey +Beardsley, his youth and early death, the sudden ripening of +uninstructed genius, and the brilliant productiveness of those last +six disease-ridden years, his best drawings stand out from the general +level of British art with such sheer audacity as to compel attention. +It may be true that more than half of this distinction is comprised +of the insolence of originality or of mere difference, but even then +his novelties and differences are so remarkable as to be things in +themselves. Most artists are generally normal in their work, departing +only into the margin of the page of art by means of a mannerism +or so upon which neither they nor their admirers insist overmuch. +Aubrey Beardsley was all mannerism; his genius all whim. That is the +explanation of its suddenness; its surprise. But it does not explain +the extraordinary vision of humanity associated with his work. + +An interviewer once asked him whether he used models. “All humanity +inspires me. Every passer-by is my unconscious sitter,” Beardsley +replied, “and,” he added, “strange as it may seem, I really draw folk +as I see them. Surely it is not my fault that they fall into certain +lines and angles.” Contradictions of actuality as each of these +statements may be, they yet throw light on Beardsley’s attitude. Those +who know his work, eclectic as it is, know that “all humanity” did not +inspire it; that “every passer-by” was not an “unconscious sitter”; +that his confession of drawing folk as he saw them was merely the art +cant of the hour, which he tacitly admits by the suggestion that such +a confession is strange, in the light of his own drawings and what he +and the interviewer knew to be actually true. It was not, of course, +his fault that these folk under his pencil fell into “certain lines +and angles,” it was the natural outcome of his genius. But that genius +was never pictorial in the realistic sense. Beardsley was not an +Impressionist, like Manet or Renoir, drawing the thing as he _saw_ +it; he was not a visionary, like William Blake, drawing the thing as +he _dreamt_ it; he was an intellectual, like George Frederick +Watts, drawing the thing as he _thought_ it. Aubrey Beardsley is +the most literary of all modern artists; his drawings are rarely the +outcome of pure observation--they are largely the outcome of thought; +they are thoughts become pictures. And even then they are rarely if +ever the blossoming of thought derived from experience; they are the +hot-house growths of thought derived from books, pictures and music. +Beardsley always worked indoors, without models and by artificial, +generally candle, light. On those rare occasions when he did go to +life for inspiration he went to life in its more artificial form--to +theatres and _salons_, to the Domino Room at the Café Royal, to +the Pavilion at Brighton and the Casino at Dieppe. + +The rococo in art and life appealed to him and influenced him in +his finest creative moments. Other influences are certainly obvious +in much of his work; something of the Japanese, but not so much as +some critics have imagined, much of Watteau, and a great deal of +Burne-Jones, who early expressed approval of the new artist--perchance, +as Tennyson said of Prince Albert and King Arthur in _The Idylls of +the King_, “Perchance in finding there, unconsciously, some image +of himself,” although the “Beardsley woman,” that sardonic creature, +who looks as if she were always hungering for the sensation after +next, might well have been, as she probably was, at her inception, +a caricature of the wraith-like women of Burne-Jones. The wan and +saintly amorousness of the figures in the _Romaunt of the Rose_ +become cadaverous with sin, and fat with luxury in the figures of +Aubrey Beardsley. But wherever the influence of Japanese or English +æstheticism asserts itself in Beardsley’s drawings, it does so to their +detriment, as in the case of the illustrations and decorations of the +_Morte d’Arthur_ and the “Procession of Joan of Arc,” although +the influence behind the decorations in the former work is obviously +more that of William Morris than of Burne-Jones. The only pictorial +influence which had a creative effect upon the work of Beardsley was +that of Watteau, under whose spell, born of deep sympathy with the old +master’s sophisticated period, Beardsley produced some of his most +satisfying pictures. + + [Illustration: PAGE DECORATION FROM THE _MORTE + D’ARTHUR_ + + _By Aubrey Beardsley_] + +Save for two months in an art school, Beardsley had no art training. +He was self-taught, and the so-called influences require another name +to describe them precisely. They were studies in technique; he used +them much as the average art student uses his models--to teach himself +the use of his materials, and they were dropped with the development +of mastery. Throughout his short and astonishing art life, Beardsley +was thus shedding those artistic influences which appeared to dominate +him. But all the time he added himself to his masters: he was never +dominated. The rapt and languorous spirituality of Burne-Jones was +translated into grotesque and leering fleshliness--if languorous at +all, languorous with sin. The frozen realities of Japan became torrid +reflections of occidental passion expressed in crisp shadows and +sweeps of line in black and white, suggesting colours undreamt of even +in the rainbow East. But apart from all this, and during the earlier +transition period, Aubrey Beardsley had actually discovered himself. At +a time when he had barely ceased turning out poor echoes of Burne-Jones +for his friends, he was drawing such daringly original things as “The +Wagnerians,” “The Fat Woman,” “The Kiss of Judas,” and “Of a Neophyte, +and how the Black Art was revealed unto him by the Fiend Asomuel.” From +such work he passed on to the decorations for _Salomé_, which +consummate magnificently his first period, and to those of _The Rape +of the Lock_, which gave formal art a new meaning and Beardsley +immortality. + +The only real and lasting influence in the art of Aubrey Beardsley +was literature. All who have written about him concur as to his +amazing booklore. He himself admitted to having been influenced by +the writers of the eighteenth century. “Works like Congreve’s plays +appeal far more vividly to my imagination than do those belonging +to the age of Pericles,” he said, in the interview already quoted. +He was well versed in the literature of the decadence, and was fond +of adventuring in strange and forbidden bookish realms of any and +every age. The romance, _Under the Hill_, especially in its +unexpurgated form, suggests deep knowledge of that literature generally +classed under _facetiæ_ and _erotica_ by the booksellers, +and there are passages which read like romanticised excerpts from the +_Psychopathia Sexualis_ of Krafft-Ebing. _The Last Letters +of Aubrey Beardsley_ reveal on almost every page an extraordinary +interest in books, equalled only by the keenness of his insight into +literature. They reveal also how he was gradually being drawn from the +literature of time to that of eternity. “Heine,” he writes, “certainly +cuts a poor figure beside Pascal. If Heine is the great warning, Pascal +is the great example to all artists and thinkers. He understood that to +become a Christian the man of letters must sacrifice his gifts, just +as Magdalen must sacrifice her beauty.” And in the last letter in the +volume, less than three weeks before his death, he wrote: “I have been +reading a good deal of S. Alphonsus Liguori; no one dispels depression +more than he. Reading his loving exclamations, so lovingly reiterated, +it is impossible to remain dull and sullen.” + +In his literary predilections, more even than in his art, you can +see the mind of Aubrey Beardsley. All the restlessness, all the +changefulness of modernity were there. His art was constantly changing, +as Oscar Wilde’s was, not necessarily progressing, for, properly +understood, Beardsley said his say in “The Fat Woman,” just as the +essence of Wilde is in _The Harlot’s House_. All afterwards was +repetition, restatement, intensification and elaboration. As with all +the work of the decadence, Aubrey Beardsley’s represented a consistent +search after new and more satisfying experiences: the soul-ship seeking +harbourage. But unlike so many decadents he possessed humour. You hear +the laugh, often enough satyric, behind his most sinister design; and +there is something in Max Beerbohm’s belief that many of his earlier +drawings, which seemed morbid and horrible, were the outcome of a +very natural boyish desire to shock conventional folk. But that does +not explain away his undeniable interest in all phases of sexual +experience. In normal youth, this tendency generally satisfies itself +by absorbing the current and colloquial variants of, say, the stories +of the _Decameron_. But Beardsley loved the abnormal and he invented +a sort of phallic symbolism to express his interest in passionate +perversities. His prose work, _Under the Hill_, is an uncompleted +study in the art of aberration. He is seldom frankly ribald, after the +manner of youth, although, strangely enough, the most masterly of all +his drawings, the illustrations to the _Lysistrata_, if it were not +for their impish cynicism, are sufficiently Rabelaisian to satiate the +crudest appetite for indecencies. It has been urged that Beardsley +was engaged with such matters as a satirist, that his designs had the +ultimate moral objective of all satire. Such apologies would make of +him an English Felicien Rops. But there is little genuine evidence to +support the contention, and what there is fades away in the light of +an unpublished letter, written after his conversation during his very +last days, imploring his friends in a few tragic, repentant words to +destroy all indecent drawings. “I implore you,” he wrote, “to destroy +_all_ copies of _Lysistrata_ and bawdy drawings. Show this to ---- and +conjure him to do same. By all that is holy _all_ obscene drawings.” +And the words, “In my death agony,” were added after the signature. + +Aubrey Beardsley, although he died a saint, represents a diabolonian +incident in British art. He was essentially a decorator; but with +the perversity of one phase of his generation he made decoration a +thing in itself. None of the books he illustrated are illustrated +or decorated in the best sense. His designs overpower the text--not +because they are greater but because they are inappropriate, sometimes +even impertinent. The diabolical thumb-nail notes in the “Bon Mot” +series have nothing whatever to do with the texts. Where the designs +for the _Morte d’Arthur_ approximate to the work of William Morris +and Burne-Jones they serve their purpose, but where they reveal the +true Beardsley they miss the point; the _Salomé_ drawings seem to +sneer at Oscar Wilde rather than interpret the play. _The Rape of +the Lock_ is eclipsed, not explained, by Beardsley. But, outrageous +as his decorative comments on the _Lysistrata_ may be, they are +at least logical commentations on the text of the play; as are also +the illustrations to his own _Under the Hill_. “No book ever gets +well illustrated once it becomes a classic,” wrote Beardsley, but +that does not explain his own failure as an illustrator. He failed +as an illustrator because his art was decoration in the abstract: it +lacked the rhythm of relationship--just as he himself lacked obvious +relationship with the decades that preceded and followed him. He is +entombed in his period as his own design is absorbed in its own firm +lines. + +But Beardsley as a fact is the significant thing, not Beardsley as +an artist. It does not matter how or where he stands in art, for he +represents not art so much as an idea, not an accomplishment so much as +a mood. The restless, inquisitive, impudent mood of the Nineties called +him forth, and he obeyed and served and repented. + + [Illustration: TAIL-PIECE FROM SALOME + + _By Aubrey Beardsley_] + + + + + CHAPTER VI + + THE NEW DANDYISM + + “The future belongs to the dandy. It is the exquisites who are + going to rule.”--OSCAR WILDE. + + +Love of town is a human passion which may not be suppressed by +advocates of the Simple Life and the Return to Nature, even though +they bedeck their propaganda with words of flame. Such enthusiasts can +never be more than apostles of a marginal gospel, attracting the few +and, perhaps, the ill-starred. To the average man they will be nothing +but curious folk, a little unbalanced--what are called cranks. For +human life gravitates townwards; even when it emigrates, and settles +in lands of prairie and forest, cities spring up about it; nothing, +indeed, is more certain than the fact that, at the touch of humanity, +the wilderness blossoms with the town. Normal man has, however, always +loved to toy with the idea of the country, with its whispers of romance +and health. But during the Eighteen Nineties, as in one or two other +periods in history, art threw a glamour over the town, and all the +artificial things conjured up by that word. Poets, it is true, did not +abandon the pastoral mood, but they added to it an enthusiasm for what +was urban. Where, in the past, they found romance only in wild and +remote places, among what are called natural things, they now found +romance in streets and theatres, in taverns and restaurants, in bricks +and mortar and the creations of artificers. Poets no longer sought +inspiration in solitude, they invoked the Muses in Fleet Street and the +Strand. And whilst not entirely abandoning, as I say, the old themes +which they have always and will always sing, they discovered a fresh +delight in more sophisticated matters. These poets sang not only to +“Corinna’s going a-maying,” but they found a subtle joy in acclaiming +“Nora of the Pavement.” It were unkind to say that they ceased hearing +the morning stars singing together, but they certainly heard also, +and with equal delight, the “Stars” of the music halls. Richard Le +Gallienne, for instance, ceased for a while his consideration of the +lilies of the field to consider “the Iron Lilies of the Strand”; John +Davidson, with his _Eclogues_, became the Virgil of Fleet Street; +and Arthur Symons became the Herrick of the Theatre of Varieties. + +In all this awakening interest in urban things, it is not surprising to +learn that London inspired a renaissance of wonder, one phase of which +found sympathetic expression in Richard Le Gallienne’s + + “London, London, our delight, + Great flower that opens but at night, + Great city of the midnight sun, + Whose day begins when day is done. + + Lamp after lamp against the sky + Opens a sudden beaming eye, + Leaping a light on either hand, + The iron lilies of the Strand.” + +Not that the wonder of London was in any sense a new thing, even in +literature. The capital city had inspired many a song, and many a +purple patch of prose. But the men of the Nineties certainly added +a new meaning to their worship of the great town. They reasserted +the romance of London as an incident in their new-found love of the +artificial. This adoration extended from streets as abstract and +adorable things separately to the houses of the streets, and even, +with a characteristically delicious thrill of wickedness, to the women +of the streets, and, with the remorseless logic of the period, to the +patchouli, the rouge and the peroxide of hydrogen which are among the +media of the craft of that ancient sisterhood. In short, it was a +characteristic of the decadence not to sing the bloom of Nature but the +bloom of cosmetics, and, likewise, town was adored for its artificial +rather than its natural characteristics. + +This new sophistication of the artistic temperament was again no sudden +thing; it was linked by many correspondences with the urbane spirit +of all times, although it favoured such remote forbears as Catullus +and Petronius rather than the nearer and more domesticated ancestors, +Charles Lamb, Samuel Johnson and Charles Dickens. It was Whistler who +taught the modern world how to appreciate the beauty and wizardry of +cities. He taught them by pictures and he taught them by magical and +unforgettable words: “And when the evening mist clothes the riverside +with poetry, as with a veil, the poor buildings lose themselves in the +dim sky, and the tall chimneys become campanili, and the warehouses +are palaces in the night, and the whole city hangs in the heavens, and +fairy-land is before us....” But Whistler’s revelation was not for +the sake of the town, it was for the sake of art. It was Oscar Wilde, +taking his cue from Whistler, who turned the idea of the beauty of art +against natural beauty, into the artificial against the natural. He +learnt from Whistler that trick of thought which placed Nature under +an obligation to Art. Whistler’s whimsical sayings about “foolish” +sunsets and “Nature catching up to Art” set Oscar Wilde’s nimble wit +dancing down the corridors of paradox. “What art really reveals to +us is Nature’s lack of design,” he says; “her curious crudities, her +extraordinary monotony, her absolutely unfinished condition. Nature has +good intentions, of course, but, as Aristotle once said, she cannot +carry them out. When I look at a landscape I cannot help seeing all its +defects. It is fortunate for us, however, that Nature is so imperfect, +as otherwise we should have had no art at all. Art is our spirited +protest, our gallant attempt to teach Nature her proper place.... All +bad art comes from returning to Life and Nature, and elevating them +into ideals. Life and Nature may sometimes be used as part of Art’s +rough material, but before they are of any real service to Art they +must be translated into artistic conventions.... Life imitates Art +far more than Art imitates Life. This results not merely from Life’s +imitative instinct but from the fact that the self-conscious aim of +Life is to find expression, and that Art offers it certain beautiful +forms through which it may realise that energy.” But Wilde was not +alone in upholding such ideas: they were in the air of the time, and +found many exponents in what became a conscious if tentative revolt +against Nature. “For behold!” cried Max Beerbohm in, if not the ablest, +one of the most convincing of his satires, “the Victorian era comes to +its end and the day of _sancta simplicitas_ is quite ended. The +old signs are here and the portents warn the seer of life that we are +ripe for a new epoch of artifice. Are not men rattling the dice-box and +ladies dipping their fingers in the rouge-pot?” And history was induced +to pay tribute to the mood by Richard Le Gallienne, who reminded his +age that the bravest of men had worn corsets. + +Romance--or, at least, romance in its old obvious sense of wonder +attuned to awe--was not, then, the final essence of this new interest +in town life; although the older romance had also its exponents during +the _fin de siècle_ renaissance. The _London Voluntaries_ of +William Ernest Henley set an older and more virile romanticism to a +new music, and in no poem was his vigorous music more vigorous or more +inspired than in the lines beginning “Down through the ancient Strand,” +which close with a pæan of ardent appreciation, if without quite +achieving real ecstasy: + + “For earth and sky and air, + Are golden everywhere, + And golden with a gold so suave and fine + The looking on it lifts the heart like wine. + Trafalgar Square + (The fountains volleying golden glaze) + Gleams like an angel market. High aloft + Over his couchant Lions in a haze + Shimmering and bland and soft, + A dust of chrysoprase, + Our Sailor takes the golden gaze + Of the saluting sun, and flames superb + As once he flamed it on his ocean round. + The dingy dreariness of the picture-place, + Turned very nearly bright, + Takes on a luminous transciency of grace, + And shows no more a scandal to the ground. + The very blind man pottering on the kerb, + Among the posies and the ostrich feathers + And the rude voices touched with all the weathers + Of the long, varying year, + Shares in the universal alms of light, + The windows, with their fleeting, flickering fires, + The height and spread of frontage shining sheer, + The quiring signs, the rejoicing roofs and spires-- + ’Tis El Dorado--El Dorado plain, + The Golden City! And when a girl goes by, + Look! as she turns her glancing head, + A call of gold is floated from her ear! + Golden, all golden! In a golden glory, + Long lapsing down a golden coasted sky, + The day not dies but seems + Dispersed in wafts and drifts of gold, and shed + Upon a past of golden song and story + And memories of gold and golden dreams.” + +But Henley was not blind to the seamy side of London life, to the grey +and bitter tragedy of a great city, as he proved on more than one +occasion, and, especially, in the poem beginning “Out of the poisonous +East.” Among the notable poets who sang of the romance of London after +Henley came Laurence Binyon, with his _London Visions_, which were +inspired by a quieter and more reflective muse, but voicing none the +less the peculiar qualities of the London enthusiasm of the time: + + “Hazily blue the air, heavy with dews + The wind; and before me the cries and the crowd, + And the sleepless murmur of wheels; not loud, + For a magical softness all imbrues. + The softness estranges my sense: I see and I hear, + But know ’tis a vision intangible, shapes that seem. + All is unreal; the sound of the falling of feet, + Coming figures, and far-off hum of the street; + A dream, the gliding hurry, the endless lights, + Houses and sky, a dream, a dream!” + +The newer and more peculiar sense of London was less general in +its expression. It sprang more out of the intimacies of life, and +appealed less to well-explored emotions of wonder and mystery than to +more unique poetic moods of fewer but by no means rare individuals. +It was more precisely a striving after reality through the medium of +temperament. This intimate romanticism of the new urbanity tended +always towards the artificial. Perhaps it was almost too real to be +romantic, as it was too romantic to be real. It was less the artistic +expression of a phase of life than the expression of a phase of art. It +was really the art of posing, using the term intellectually to indicate +what was certainly a state of mind rather than a conceit, for there +is no reason why a pose need be other than sincere. The artificiality +of the period which thus expressed itself by means of the personal +pose was essentially a form of dandyism, not the dandyism which might +or could express itself merely in clothing, but that dandyism of the +temperament which found a true philosopher in Barbey D’Aurevilly and, +perhaps, a truer in Charles Baudelaire. The dandyism of Baudelaire +only expressed itself incidentally in the clothing of the body. It +strove tragically enough to achieve soul-sufficiency, not by tasting, +as the old mystics did, all the stars and all the heavens in a crust +of bread, but by experiencing purgatory in every sensation. He and his +followers were dandies of the spirit; but acute consciousness of sin +bade them resist not evil, in contradistinction to the older mystics +who became dandies of the spirit because they resisted evil. The desire +of Baudelaire, as of all those who are in any way akin to him, was to +discover in life that ecstasy which is eternity. + +Dandyism may, and generally does, express itself in clothes; it did +in the Eighteen Nineties express itself in the apparel of many a +self-conscious “masher.” But, whether it expresses itself in the +clothing of the body or in the clothing of the mind, it is generally +the outcome of similar causes. The chief of these, as Barbey +D’Aurevilly saw, is boredom. Dandyism is thus a protest against the +lassitude of soul which follows lapse of interest in the life of +the hour. “Like those philosophers,” says D’Aurevilly, “who raised +up an obligation superior to the law, so the dandies of their own +authority make rules that shall dominate the most aristocratic, the +most conservative sets, and with the help of wit, which is an acid, and +of grace, which is a dissolvent, they manage to ensure the acceptance +of their changeable rules, though these are in fact nothing but the +outcome of their own audacious personalities. Such a result is curious, +and flows from the nature of things. In vain does society refuse to +bend, in vain do aristocracies admit only received opinions; one day +Caprice arises and makes its way through those seemingly impenetrable +grades, which were really undermined by boredom.” The revolt against +Nature in England was in reality a revolt against the ennui of +conventions which in operation acted as checks upon the free movements +of personalities and ideas. D’Aurevilly has observed that dandyism in +recent times was an English product, but also that it was introduced +into this country originally by the gallants of the Restoration who +had lived in France during the time England was under the heel of the +Puritan: it was, in fact, the Pagan’s reply to Puritanism. Dandyism has +always been in the nature of such a reply. But it is interesting to +note that the new romanticism which found expression in the decadence +was also derived from France, as was also its immediate ancestor, that +romantic movement to which D’Aurevilly belonged. + +Dandyism of the intellect was as much a characteristic of Théophile +Gautier, Charles Baudelaire and Barbey D’Aurevilly as it was of +Whistler, Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley, and it is worth noting that +these three English-speaking artists were dandies also in the sartorial +sense. But the resemblance to the innate dandyism of D’Aurevilly is +even more marked when we remember his theory that dandyism always +produced the unexpected--“that which could not logically be anticipated +by those accustomed to the yoke of rules.” Unexpectedness was the +secret of half the originality of the Eighteen Nineties; it was the +salt of its philosophy, and the charm of its most characteristic art. +“To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect,” said +Oscar Wilde in his _Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the +Young_, a little work which is a veritable philosophy of dandyism. +Literature in the Nineties ran to epigram, that poseur of syntax, and +to paradox, that dandified juggler of ideas. Habits played blind man’s +buff with convention; and so determined was the fashion of the hour to +be “out of fashion” that, with those who were _dans le mouvement_ +heterodoxy took the sting out of its own tail by becoming a form of +orthodoxy. So remarkable was this spread of intellectual vanity that +it was quite possible to have at one and the same time such variations +as Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley surprising by their neo-paganism +and its glorification of the artificial; Max Beerbohm and G. S. Street +surprising by their satires of the former and, above all, by their +very conservatism in an age of revolt; and, at the other extreme, such +a complete and versatile revolutionary surprise packet of vanity as +Bernard Shaw, who added to the general astonishment by insisting upon +the Puritanical basis of his own theory of life. Equally surprising +and unexpected to all but the most patient observers of intellectual +revolutions, was the completion of the somersault of ideas at the very +dawn of the twentieth century, when intellectual consciousness landed +on its feet, as it were, becoming wildly English and frankly Christian +in the genius of G. K. Chesterton. + +Whilst the essential dandyism of the decade lasted it needed an urban +background. Town was its natural element, pastoral dandyism being +as yet unborn, though pastoral romance was as old as the hills. The +very idyll of love literally assumed a new complexion. It was not +fashionable for poets to sing of shepherd who told + + “his tale + Under the hawthorn in the dale.” + +It was the fashion to sing, as Arthur Symons did, of + + “The chance romances of the streets, + The Juliet of a night”; + +and poets, far from protesting overmuch of eternal fidelity, +unblushingly confessed their lack of amorous concentration: + + “I too have sought on many a breast + The ecstasy of love’s unrest, + I too have had my dreams and met + (Ah me!) how many a Juliet.” + +Such poems are in many instances artificial to the extent that they are +obviously the result of deliberately cultivated moods; they and their +kind are the green carnations of song; and they are unnatural only to +the extent that they represent a peculiarly civilised, as distinct +from a peculiarly barbarian, form of life. These differences reveal +themselves more clearly in Arthur Symons’ defence of his own early +poems, which a reviewer had called “unwholesome” because, he said, they +had “a faint smell of patchouli about them.” The name of that scent was +used more or less symbolically, and the poet accepts it as such and +sums up an eloquent defence of his position as follows:-- + +“Patchouli! Well, why not Patchouli? Is there any ‘reason in nature’ +why we should write exclusively about the natural blush, if the +delicately acquired blush of rouge has any attraction for us? Both +exist; both, I think, are charming in their way; and the latter as +a subject has, at all events, more novelty. If you prefer your ‘new +mown hay’ in the hayfield, and I, it may be, in a scent bottle, why +may not my individual caprice be allowed to find expression as well as +yours? Probably I enjoy the hayfield as much as you do, but I enjoy +quite other scents and sensations just as well and I take the former +for granted and write my poem, for a change, about the latter. There +is no necessary difference in artistic value between a good poem about +a flower in the hedge, and a good poem about the scent in a sachet. I +am always charmed to read beautiful poems about nature in the country. +Only, personally, I prefer town to country; and in the town we have to +find for ourselves, as best we may, the _décor_ which is the town +equivalent of the great natural _décor_ of fields and hills. Here +it is that artificiality comes in; and if anyone sees no beauty in the +effects of artificial light in all the variable, most human, and yet +most factitious town landscape, I can only pity him, and go on my own +way.” + +The above passage does something more than defend with sound logic +the artificial attitude of the decadence: it throws a very useful +light upon the whole of that phase of the art and life of the period. +Arthur Symons in his own personality substantiates Barbey D’Aurevilly’s +theory that the dandy is the product of boredom; Symons having been +nurtured in Nonconformity represents literally a Pagan revolt against +Puritanism. His use of such words as “novelty,” “change” and “caprice” +further reveal the existence of a temperament which, having grown +restive under the constraints of custom and recognised procedure, seeks +reality in the conscious exploitation of mood and whim. It was only the +very young and the very limited in vision who imagined that novelty, +caprice and change, associated with sensation, held in themselves +any satisfying food for the soul; and, if they did imagine such a +thing, disillusion was ever waiting for the chance to offer them her +cold companionship. As for the whim of artificiality, that child of +decadent inquisitiveness, neither in life nor in art was it other than +limited and exotic. Even the hints of the existence of perversions +like homosexuality were more or less exaggerated: they would be more +appropriate to the London of to-day than to the London immediately +preceding the trial of Oscar Wilde. + +Aubrey Beardsley was the supreme example of the revolt against Nature, +but it is probable that even his revolt was more artistic than actual. +In his art he realised Oscar Wilde’s dictum that “The first duty in +life is to be as artificial as possible.” His pictures are at the +antipodes of naturalism, and his unfinished romance, _Under the +Hill_, is a mosaic of artificiality. Life is never left to its own +unaided devices for a moment in this strange work, which seems at +times, by the very heaped-up deliberation of its artifice, to satirise +all the weaknesses of the decadence, by pressing them to their logical +conclusion in the negation of all spontaneous desire save desire for +the gratification of perverse sensations. It creates life out of +cosmetics and aberrations; and Nature never appears except in the form +of an abnormality. Could anything more artificial be imagined, outside +of a picture by Beardsley, than this description of the toilet of +Venus? “Before a toilet that shone like the altar of Notre Dame des +Victoires, Venus 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 about her +neck. Her three favourite girls, Papplarde, Blanchemains and Loreyne, +waited immediately upon her with perfume and powder in delicate flaçons +and frail cassolettes, and held in porcelain jars the ravishing paints +prepared by Châteline for those cheeks and lips that had grown a little +pale with anguish of exile. Her three favourite boys, Claude, Clair +and Sarrasine, stood amorously about with salver, fan and napkin. +Millarmant 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 +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.” + +In spite of all this artificiality, the revolt against Nature was not +organised, but it was very real and very self-conscious for all that. +An artificial and half-hearted attempt was made to revive the literary +tavern, and literary discussions were actually heard once again in so +unpromising a quarter as Fleet Street, as they once had been heard +in the days of Samuel Johnson. The Rhymers’ Club foregathered at the +Cheshire Cheese, and members read their poems to one another and +discussed the great business of poetry and life. This revival of the +town did not last long; a new charmer appeared upon the scene, and +even poets fell before the seductions of suburban life. They became +victims of our national love of compromise, and the exodus began. “Who +knows but that Artifice is in truth at our gates and that soon she may +pass through our streets?” asked Max Beerbohm, in 1894. The new queen +was more than at our gates: she had entered the city; but she was never +really enthroned. On the eve of her accession fear struck the hearts of +_les jeunes ecrivains_; fear, or disillusion, or the birth-pangs +of middle age, and Queen Artifice was denied by her whilom courtiers +from villa retreats without the city walls. The only artifice which +actually survived was that which, like the romance in Kipling’s poem, +was already “printed and bound in little books.” The chance romances +of the streets were abandoned for the reputedly more certain realities +of home life. Bohemians cut their locks, shed their soft collars and +fell back upon Suburbia. No more songs about Nora of the Pavement, no +more rhapsodies about the glamour of the footlights, no more rhetoric +about passionate and scarlet lives; even dandyism of thought and word +disappeared; for, once you live in a suburb, there is nothing left but +to become ordinary. + +The decadence suffered early from fatty degeneration of its naughtiness +and found sanctuary in the suburbs. Even Max Beerbohm, during his +“first year at Oxford,” saw it coming, as he thought of “the lurid +verses written by young men who, in real life, know no haunt more lurid +than a literary public-house.” + + + + + CHAPTER VII + + THE INCOMPARABLE MAX + + +The New Urbanity had no finer expression than that which was summed +up and set forth in the personality and art of Max Beerbohm. It was +fine because it was at once normal and unique, sane but inconsequent, +sedate without being serious, and mannered without empty severity or +formality. Max was the comic spirit of the Nineties, and he took his +elegant way without haste or fuss, dropping appropriate remarks about +himself apropos of others and vice versa; throwing upon the decadence +of his day the critical light of a half-appreciative humour. Without +being decadent, this extraordinarily modern personality managed to +represent the decadence laughing, or rather smiling, at itself. + +Max Beerbohm was born in London, in August 1872, and it is interesting +to note that he entered the world three days after his famous +contemporary, Aubrey Beardsley, who was born at Brighton during the +same week. He was educated at Charterhouse, and Merton College, +Oxford, where his critical and satirical gifts revealed themselves in +caricatures of masters and dons; in a letter to _The Carthusian_, +over the pseudonym, “Diogenes,” complaining against the dullness +of the school journal, and in a satire in Latin elegiacs, called +_Beccarius_, twelve copies of which were privately printed, +at the suggestion of his form-master, in the form of a four-page +pamphlet. A rough yellow paper was used for the publication, and the +year of issue was 1890. The colour and date may be noted; and, still +more significant, the title of his first notable essay, “A Defence of +Cosmetics,” written at Oxford, and published in the first number of +_The Yellow Book_ in 1894. + +That year and the two following saw the reputation he had made at +Oxford carried to London, and Max, in the second year of manhood, leapt +into the front rank of the literary renaissance. During these years he +contributed to _The Yellow Book_, in addition to the above-named essay, +“A Letter to the Editor,” in July 1894, and “A Note on George the +Fourth,” in October 1894. Later he contributed “Dandies and Dandies,” +to _Vanity_, New York, February 1895; “Notes on Foppery,” to _The +Unicorn_, September 1895; “Be it Cosiness,” to _The Pageant_, Christmas +1895; “A Good Prince,” to _The Savoy_, January 1896; “De Natura +Barbatulorum,” to _The Chap-Book_, February 1896; and “Poor Romeo!” to +_The Yellow Book_, April 1896. These essays were collected, revised +and, in some instances, renamed, and published in a little red volume, +with white paper label, under the title of _The Works of Max Beerbohm_, +in 1896. During the same period he contributed caricatures to _The +Sketch_, _The Pall Mall Budget_, _Pick-me-up_, _The Yellow Book_, _The +Octopus_ and _The Savoy_. Some of these have been re-issued in volume +form, but the majority are buried in the files of those publications. + +There is nothing specially remarkable in the amount of work recorded +above, but its distinctive quality for a young man still under +twenty-four years of age is characteristic of the precocity of the +period. More remarkable still, however, is the air of ancient wisdom +which pervades the essays. Max Beerbohm gives the impression of having +been born grown-up--that is to say, more or less ripe when others +would be more or less raw and green. One can well imagine such a youth +a few years earlier filling, in a more elegant way, the part of Sir +W. S. Gilbert’s immortal “Precocious Baby,” who was born, it will be +remembered, with + + “A pipe in his mouth, and a glass in his eye, + A hat all awry, + An octagon tie, + And a miniature-miniature glass in his eye,” + +for he assures us that at school he read _Marius the Epicurean_ +in bed, and found the book as fascinating as _Midshipman Easy_. +The ripeness of maturity having established itself so early, it is not +surprising to find Max Beerbohm announcing his intention of settling +down to a cosy dotage at the great age of twenty-five, and, as a step +towards this comfortable end, publishing his collected _Works_, +with a Bibliography by Mr John Lane of the Bodley Head. “Once again in +the delusion that Art,” he wrote, in 1895, “loving the recluse, would +make his life happy, I wrote a little for a yellow quarterly and had +that _succès de fiasco_ which is always given to a young writer of +talent. But the stress of creation soon overwhelmed me. Only Art with +a capital H gives any consolations to her henchman. And I, who crave +no knighthood, shall write no more. I shall write no more. Already I +feel myself to be a trifle outmoded. I belong to the Beardsley period. +Younger men, with months of activity before them, with fresher schemes +and notions, with newer enthusiasm, have pressed forward since then. +_Cedo junioribus._ Indeed, I stand aside with no regret. For to be +outmoded is to be a classic, if one has written well. I have acceded to +the hierarchy of good scribes and rather like my niche.” + +It was an age of poses, and this was one of the most refreshing: all +the other young men were frantically striving to cram into their youth +the multiple experiences of a generation weary of experiencing anything +older than the moment before last. But Max in his undue maturity was +not old; he was merely trying the alleged unruffled calm of elderliness +on the palate of waning youth (a period when men feel older than +they are, or will be) and, in contradistinction to the hot-house +ardency of the hour, he declared it to be good. Actually, Max was that +wise thing--a ripe youth. Even now he seems to be immune from the +trespassing years, having, doubtless, forestalled them in the Nineties. +The elderly by nature do not grow old. So, having terminated his life +as a writer in 1896 by the publication of his _Works_, with the +whimsical conclusion, “Diminuendo,” in which he confessed that he +believed himself outmoded, and declared his intention of living a life +of meditation in some unfashionable suburban retreat, he began writing +again. His second period produced a fantastic tale, _The Happy +Hypocrite_, and a companion volume to the _Works_, entitled +_More_. This book, published in 1899, is a selection from among a +considerable number of essays contributed to various periodicals, all +of which, with the exception of _To-Morrow_, are in the normal +current of publicity. More recently he has issued a further volume of +essays, _Yet Again_ (1909), a novel, _Zuleika Dobson_ (1911), +a volume of parodies on modern prose styles, _A Christmas Garland_ +(1912), several collections of caricatures, and a one-act comedy of his +has been produced at the Palace Theatre. + +A notable event in his literary life was the succession to Bernard Shaw +as dramatic critic of _The Saturday Review_, in 1898. Just twelve +months before Max had written his own valedictory--“Be it Cosiness,” +reprinted in the _Works_ as “Diminuendo,” Bernard Shaw joined +the staff of _The Saturday Review_, and when ill-health forced +him to relinquish his post he wrote an equally famous “Valedictory,” +announcing Max as his successor. “The younger generation is knocking at +the door,” wrote Shaw, in his generous announcement of the new-comer. +“The younger generation is knocking at the door; and as I open it +there steps spritely in the incomparable Max.” Max Beerbohm was not +exactly the younger generation knocking at the door of dramatic +criticism. Bernard Shaw was that younger generation. The incomparable +Max had no new axe to grind. He was neither new nor old, progressive +nor reactionary. He brought to the theatre nothing save his own +personality, and advocating no other cause, and upholding neither this +“movement” nor that, he contented himself by recording his own dramatic +likes and dislikes. And if his penetrating and creative criticism did +not always see eye to eye with the upholders of what was called the +“higher drama,” it had, in addition to its independence and insight, +the lasting charm of good writing. + + [Illustration: “MR. W. B. YEATS PRESENTING MR. GEORGE + MOORE TO THE QUEEN OF THE FAIRIES” + + _By Max Beerbohm_] + +There are those even among the appreciators of Max Beerbohm who seem +to take special delight in laying stress upon what they call his +cleverness and brilliance. Such obvious characteristics of his work +are not to be denied; but, when all has been said upon the point, it +is only right to admit that cleverness and brilliance, common enough +stock-in-trade even of the literary huckster, are only a phase, and +a minor phase, of the art of Max Beerbohm. First and foremost, he +represents a point of view. And, secondly, that point of view is in +no sense a novelty in a civilised society. Every age has had its +representative of a similar attitude towards life, in one a Horace, +in another a Joseph Addison and, again, a Charles Lamb. In our age +it is Max Beerbohm. He is the spirit of urbanity incarnate; he is +town. He is civilisation hugging itself with whimsical appreciation +for a conservative end. “A delicate and Tory temperament precludes me +from conversing with Radicals,” he says. That does not preclude him +from laughing at institutions and what might be called institutional +persons. But it precludes him from shouting and arguing loudly, in an +age given overmuch to that sort of thing. He talks the quiet talk of +culture, and his finely balanced essays betray conscious appreciation +of the immemorial traditions of culture on every page. When he +reproves, in either prose or pictures, he reproves with a smile. His +laughter is ever Meredith’s laughter of the mind; that laughter which +the novelist considered a corrective of civilised foibles because it +is based in a love of civilisation; the laugh that, in Meredith’s own +words, “will be of the order of the smile, finely tempered, showing +sunlight of the mind, mental richness rather than noisy enormity. Its +common aspect is one of unsolicitous observation, as if surveying a +full field and having leisure to dart on its chosen morsels, without +any fluttering eagerness. Men’s future upon earth does not attract it; +their honesty and shapeliness in the present does; and whenever they +wax out of proportion, overblown, affected, pretentious, bombastical, +hypocritical, pedantic, fantastically delicate; whenever it sees them +self-deceived or hoodwinked, given to run riot in idolatries, drifting +into vanities, congregating in absurdities, planning shortsightedly, +plotting dementedly; whenever they are at variance with their +professions, and violate the unwritten but perceptible laws binding +them in consideration one to another; whenever they offend sound +reason, fair justice; are false in humility or mined with conceit, +individually or in the bulk, the Spirit overhead will look humanely +malign and cast an oblique light on them, followed by volleys of +silvery laughter.” That benign yet critical spirit is the comic spirit, +and it fathered the urbane essays and caricatures of Max Beerbohm. But +it did not impress itself upon the genius of Max so as to overwhelm it +with social purpose. It left a fair margin for the play of personality, +for playfulness in itself, and even for that essential egotism whose +special flavour captivates by insinuation rather than by advertisement. + +The attitude he adopts in his books is, of course, a pose, but he +himself would not deny the imputation. On the contrary. His pose is +as natural as anything civilised can be. Civilisation is the master +art of the human race, and Max Beerbohm insists upon his civilised +attributes, realising in his every mood and sensation that the long +years of human development have made him a detail of that master art, +just as a column is a detail of architecture, or rhythm of verse. +He is not, however, an expression of the hardness of even civilised +life; he is the expression of its delicacy and refinement, one of +the points, as it were, wherein the race in its artificial aspects +becomes self-conscious, contemplative, artistic, meet for Mayfair or +St James’s. He is a sane manifestation of dandyism. There is evidence +of this in every line of his essays--from the careful and inimitable +excellence of his prose to his delight, often satirical, in the use of +ornate and exotic words. You would deduce a dandy from such essays, but +not a D’Orsay, although Max is also an amateur in portraiture. D’Orsay +abandoned himself to personal display; he was more a fop than a dandy, +and his gorgeous clothes were flamboyant weeds rather than the nice +accentuations of a man and his works. Max is never abandoned, so you +could never deduce a fop from his essays. What you could deduce would +be a person more dignified, less theatrical, but none the less proud of +himself; and the quiet eccentricity of his clothes would serve as a +suitable background for the sly brightness of his wit. For the dandyism +of Max is intrinsic; it is a state of being rather than an assumption; +it is psychological, expressing itself in wit rather than clothes; and +wit is the dandyism of the mind. + +It does not matter what he writes about: his subjects interest because +he is interesting. A good essayist justifies any subject, and Max +Beerbohm as an essayist is next in succession to Charles Lamb. His +essays, and these are his greatest works, are genial invitations to +discuss Max, and you discuss him all the more readily and with fuller +relish because they are not too explicit; indeed, he is often quite +prim. “On the banner that I wave is embroidered a device of prunes and +prisms,” he says. The author of _The Works of Max Beerbohm_, of +_More_, and of _Yet Again_, does not tell you all; he pays +you a delicate compliment by leaving you something to tell yourself; +the end of his ellipsis, as in all the great essayists, is yourself. He +is quite frank with you, and properly genial; but he is too fastidious +to rush into friendship with his readers. They must deserve friendship +first. He does not gush. In his earlier work he recalled the Wise Youth +in _Richard Feverel_, and Whistler of the _Ten O’Clock_. +But latterly he has grown more confiding and less artificial. His +whimseys have given place to irony--an irony with the flavour of a +fully matured wine. But he has not, as yet, achieved great distinction +in letters outside the medium in which he has proved himself a master. +His departures from the essay, in the form of a short story and a +novel, are, in a sense, extensions of his genius as an essayist. _The +Happy Hypocrite_ is really an essay masquerading as a story, and +_Zuleika Dobson_, a wreath of essays (including one exquisite +gem on Oxford), aphorisms and detached reflections, hung about a +refreshingly extravagant story. The real Max Beerbohm is, I fancy, an +essayist pure and simple, the essay being the inevitable medium for +the expression of his urbane and civilised genius. There are, he has +told us, a few people in England who are interested in repose as an +art. He is, undoubtedly, one of them. But he is also interested in +the art of the essay, and his essays are exquisite contributions to +that rare art. In them you see revealed the complete Max, interpreting +deftly, by means of wit and humour, imagination and scholarship, that +“uninterrupted view of my fellow-creatures,” to use his own words, +which he admits preferable to books, and which, doubtless, he prefers +better than any other view in life. + +Even his caricatures are essays, and not only in the pictorial sense, +for many of them are incomplete in themselves; they depend for their +fulness of satire upon the carefully worded descriptions added by +the artist. His earlier style of drawing was far simpler than the +elaborate pictures which are the delight of so many who love fun with +a sting in it, at the now familiar Leicester Gallery exhibitions. His +_Caricatures of Twenty-five Gentlemen_ (1896) is a volume of +drawings in simple black and white, each in the nature of a grotesque +comment upon some contemporary personality. There is little of the +deeper satire which Max afterwards developed. It was a decade of +attitudinising, and caricatures in this early volume are portraits +of modern attitudes seen through the lens of a temperament which +distorts without malice for the sake of healthy and critical laughter. +But, with the exception of the caricature of Aubrey Beardsley, +which combines caricature of that artist’s personal appearance and +his art, plus a clever comment on his exotic and artificial point +of view in the introduction of a toy French poodle, there is very +little below the surface of these drawings; they lack depth. His +later work in caricature is broader as well as deeper, and his keen +sense of satirical fun does not hesitate to go hand-in-hand with a +sharper form of criticism when face to face with pomposity or the +self-sufficiency of our mandarins. The fulness of Max Beerbohm’s genius +as a caricaturist is to be seen in the volume of coloured drawings +called _The Poet’s Corner_ (1904). Here we have him arousing the +laughter of amusement in such drawings as “Omar Khayyám,” “Dante in +Oxford”; the laughter which is criticism in “Robert Browning taking Tea +with the Browning Society,” and “Mr Rudyard Kipling takes a bloomin’ +Day aht, on the blasted ’Eath, along with Britannia, ’is Gurl”; and +the laughter which ceases to be laughter in “Mr W. B. Yeats presenting +Mr George Moore to the Queen of the Fairies,” and the unforgettable +“Mr Tennyson reading _In Memoriam_ to his Sovereign”--surely +among the great caricatures of all time. Max rarely knots the lash +of his satire, but his caricatures of certain aspects of Court life +prove him to be capable of inflicting criticisms which might well make +their subjects wince. In the main, however, his caricatures suggest an +amused impartiality. Most of us are in the habit of making to ourselves +sarcastic or whimsical remarks about the people we meet, see or hear +about. Max Beerbohm has put such usually silent comment into pictures; +and these pictures constitute in themselves a revival of caricature +in a country that had practically lost the art of personal satire in +pictures--and the taste for it. + + + + + CHAPTER VIII + + SHOCKING AS A FINE ART + + “Thrice I have patted my God on the head that men might call me + brave.”--_Tomlinson_, by RUDYARD KIPLING. + + +Closely related to the new dandyism and the search for reality by +means of mood and sensation in their more sophisticated forms came the +gentle art of astonishing the middle class. The one was in the nature +of a by-product of the other. Young bloods of the period delighted to +_épater le bourgeois_, as the phrase went, and with experience a +new kind of art came into vogue: the art of shocking. In a sense the +necessity was thrust upon the younger generation by the unimaginative +opposition their demand for more life encountered at the hands of the +autocracy of elderly respectability. It was really a contest between +the stupidity of vitality and the vitality of stupidity. For if those +in authority had occasional doubts as to their own material importance +they had none about their virtue and righteousness. No one, indeed, +had ever contested their right to such views, and these views were +supported by the full weight of traditional opinion. It was hardly +surprising that they should look with suspicion upon the restiveness of +the younger generation, because that unrest was not the conventional +sowing of wild oats: a custom conventionally recognised from earliest +times as the natural safety valve of turbulent youth. It was a far more +subtle thing. To let off steam and settle down into the steady and +respectable run of life is one thing, and comprehensible to elderly +folk who have been through the process, but to let off steam and refuse +to settle down seemed serious folly, especially when arguments were +advanced in defence of what, in the elderly point of view, was nothing +less than outrageous conduct. The bewildered elders of the Nineties +were faced with that dilemma. + +At the same time, the gospel of _épater le bourgeois_ was in +the main less an actuality than an idea seeking expression in life +and using Art as its advocate. True it had its practical exponents, +but these were generally confined to the more literary and artistic +circles, and for the general public they became a part of the mythology +of the Nineties even during the decade. Rumours of strange wickedness +were heard in many directions. Names were mentioned; and certain +artists and minor poets gained repute by their alleged association +with vice. It was fashionable in “artistic” circles to drink absinthe +and to discuss its “cloudy green” suggestiveness; and other hitherto +exotic drugs were also called into the service of these dilettanti of +sin. Certain drugs seemed to gather about them an atmosphere of romance +during these years, and all sorts of stimulants and soporifics, from +incense and perfumes to opium, hashish, and various forms of alcohol, +were used as means to extend sensation beyond the range of ordinary +consciousness, along with numerous well-known and half-known physical +aids to passionate experience. The age was extraordinarily sensitive, +for instance, to the suggestiveness of sex. The subject was discussed +with a new interest and a new frankness in essays and novels and +plays; but for one person interested in the medico-legal sides of the +questions raised, a dozen must have been drawn to the subject by a +craving for forbidden fruit. Thus sex-inquisitiveness awoke slumbering +aberrations in some and suggested them to others, with the result that +definite perverse practices became associated with the “advanced” +movement. + +The appearance in literature and art of this new outlook upon life +bore with it all the attractiveness of novelty and daring, and the +irritation such things arouse among a people who have lived for +many years under the impression that morals, and even ideas, were +more or less fixed. But the very spirit of the time contested such +complaisance. An imp of disquiet was abroad, scattering notes of +interrogation like confetti of fire among cherished principles and +customs. The young men enjoyed the fun as they rushed about smashing +up the intellectual and moral furniture of their parents. A generation +nourished by the high normalities of Tennyson and Browning, which +had thought Matthew Arnold (the critic) rather daring, and which had +been nearly scared out of its Swinburne and its Rossetti by Robert +Buchanan’s attack on “The Fleshly School of Poetry,” had every reason +to be horrified by the appearance of Ibsen and Nietzsche. Many shook +their heads ominously and took refuge in _Locksley Hall_: + + “Authors--essayist, atheist, novelist, realist, rhymester, play + your part, + Paint the mortal shame of nature with the living hues of Art. + + Rip your brothers’ vices open, strip your own foul passions bare; + Down with Reticence, down with Reverence--forward--naked--let them + stare.” + +Others took the change in better humour, and either joined the dance or +became interested spectators. + +Influences behind the art of shocking were not entirely French, though +the French decadents played their part. Throughout the whole of the +period English publishers were issuing excellent translations of modern +masterpieces from many European idea-centres, and in this way such +writers as Tolstoy, Ibsen, Zola, Nietzsche, D’Annunzio and Turgenev +became familiar aids to advanced thought in this country. Hitherto the +language barrier had left these writers the property of the cultured +classes, as was the case with the French decadents, the chief of whom +have not even now been given adequate representation in English. The +introduction of such writers was like the opening up of a new country +to be immediately settled by ardent colonists. Their ideas were eagerly +absorbed and, what is more interesting, used in a vigorous criticism +of life. But there is little doubt that the first foreign ethical +influence of the period was Henrik Ibsen, whose method of criticising +conventional morals by means of drama had a profound effect upon +thinking people and dramatists. Nietzsche was known only to the few +who read German at the beginning of the decade, but before the death of +the old century the first attempt at a complete edition of the works of +Friedrich Nietzsche was made by Henry & Co. The enterprise, however, +aroused so little interest that it was abandoned after the production +of four volumes. It was not until 1896 that any general interest in +Nietzsche’s ideas began in this country. In that year Havelock Ellis +contributed a study of the German philosopher to _The Savoy_, and +there were several other notices and criticisms in the reviews. The +earliest reference to Nietzsche in the literature of the period is to +be found in George Egerton’s _Keynotes_ (1892), but there are several +pages devoted to his ideas in the _Sentences and Paragraphs_ of John +Davidson (1893), who seems to have been the only writer of the time to +have come directly under the spell of the Nietzschean philosophy. The +earliest British journal avowedly upholding an “egoistic philosophy” +was started in 1898, under the title of _The Eagle and the Serpent_. It +bore beneath its title these words from _Zarathustra_: “The proudest +animal under the sun and the wisest animal under the sun have set out +to reconnoitre”; and for further explanation the following:-- + + “_Dedicated to the Philosophy of Life Enunciated by Nietzsche, + Stirner, Thoreau and Goethe_, THE EAGLE AND THE SERPENT _labours + for the Recognition of New Ideals in Politics and Sociology, in + Ethics and Philosophy, in Literature and Art_. + + * * * * * + + A RACE OF ALTRUISTS IS NECESSARILY A RACE OF SLAVES. + + A RACE OF FREEMEN IS NECESSARILY A RACE OF EGOISTS. + + THE GREAT ARE ONLY GREAT BECAUSE WE ARE ON OUR KNEES. LET US + RISE!” + +This curious and entertaining little paper was published at first +bi-monthly, and then occasionally and fitfully, until the last number +appeared in 1902. + +One foreign influence making for frankness of expression was that of +Emile Zola, whose books were issued in a well-translated, although +somewhat expurgated, edition, at a popular price. Thousands of these +were sold and read, thus preparing the way for the books of our native +realists like George Moore, whose _Esther Waters_ gave one of the +most violent shocks of the period; Arthur Morrison, with his _Tales +of Mean Streets_ and _A Child of the Jago_, and Somerset +Maugham’s _Liza of Lambeth_. + +Under such influences the art of shocking rattled along merrily +enough, and claimed many devotees. These may be divided roughly into +two classes: the Individual and the Social. In the former there were +the typical men of the literary movement of the Nineties and their +followers, astonishing either from innate addiction to caprice, +irrepressibility of whim, love of experiment or, as was often the case +with the rank and file, mere cussedness. Certain demonstrations in the +art of shocking recall the story of the man who, seeing the father +of decadent poetry, remarked to a friend: “There goes Baudelaire. I +wager he is going to sleep _under_ the bed to-night instead of +_in_ it, just to astonish it.” Among the art products of the more +important members of this class stand the paradoxes of Oscar Wilde, +the pictures of Aubrey Beardsley, the early poems of Arthur Symons and +the satires of Max Beerbohm. But many of the writers who might have +astonished the middle classes by administering artistic shocks put +other qualities into their art and filled their lives with astonishing +incidents. Nothing is more remarkable in looking back at the Nineties +than to note how Death has gathered to himself so many of the period’s +most characteristic and most interesting figures. All of these men +“lived their own lives,” and when whim or Fate led them along perilous +paths they suffered the consequences. Most of them died young, several +were scarcely more than youths; some died of diseases which might have +been checked or prevented in more careful lives; some were condemned +to death at an early age by miserable maladies, and some were so +burdened by the malady of the soul’s unrest that they voluntarily +crossed the borderland of life. It would seem as if these restless +and tragic figures thirsted so much for life, and for the life of the +hour, that they put the cup to their lips and drained it in one deep +draught: perhaps all that was mortal of them felt so essential to the +Nineties that life beyond the decade might have been unbearable. Oscar +Wilde died in 1900 at the age of forty-four; Aubrey Beardsley died +in 1898, aged twenty-six; Ernest Dowson, in 1900, aged thirty-three; +Charles Conder, in 1909, aged forty-one; Lionel Johnson, in 1902, aged +thirty-five; Hubert Crackanthorpe, in 1896, aged thirty-one; Henry +Harland, in 1905, aged forty-four; Francis Thompson, in 1907, aged +forty-eight; and John Davidson, in 1909, aged fifty-two. + +The second section of those who astonished the middle classes was +composed of revolutionists and reformers who shocked by expressing +the newly awakened social consciousness which demanded change in the +affairs of the State--wider margins of personal freedom and better +opportunities of life and comfort for all. First among these came +Bernard Shaw, who introduced a new subjective daring into dialectics +and social controversy, avowedly designed to shock, prod and irritate +the social consciousness of the bourgeoisie into practical moral +and economic zeal. Grant Allen wrote _The Woman Who Did_, also +in the same spirit, to draw attention to the difficulties of our +marriage customs. The direct influence behind this group, although +he did not supply it with all its ideas, was Ibsen. The Norwegian +dramatist-philosopher suggested the attitude of the moral revolt. +It was he, and not Nietzsche, who first taught the Englishman and +Englishwoman to “transvalue their values,” to examine with a critical +and restless eye the moral scaffolding of their civilisation, and to +suggest to them where they would find weaknesses. And the result was +that the middle classes were more shocked by this attack than by any +other astonishing thing of the period--save the fall of Oscar Wilde. + +Different in aim and method as these two classes of artists in +astonishment may have been, they were each the outcome of the same +demand for more freedom, more experience, more sensation, more life. +What was happening in England was but the echo of what had been +happening in Western Europe for a couple of decades. The idea of +self-realisation, as old as Emerson, and older, was at the root of the +modern attitude. The younger generation became acutely conscious of +parental control. Turgenev had interpreted the attitude in its broader +aspects in _Fathers and Children_, which was published in Russia +as long ago as 1862. But the nihilism of Turgenev’s great creation, +Bazarov, was not at the back of the English revolt, except in a common +desire of freedom. Nor were the men of the Nineties wholly absorbed in +material experiences. Every physical excess of the time went hand in +hand with spiritual desire. The soul seemed to be trying the way of +the flesh with calamitous desperation. Long years of Puritanism and +rationalism had proved the folly of salvation by morality and salvation +by reason, so in a fit of despair the unsatisfied spirit of the age +sought respite in salvation by sin. The recognition of sin was the +beginning of the revolt against rationalism and the beginning of the +revival of mysticism. The latter revealed itself in the Theosophical +movement, in the sudden popularity of Maurice Maeterlinck, and in +numerous conversions to Rome, the first and last home of Christian +mysticism. + +The decadence was a form of soul-sickness, and the only cure for the +disease was mysticism. But there was also another form of the soul’s +unrest which sprang more out of excessive vitality straining at the +leash of custom. It was the unrest of an age which had grown too big +for its boots. New conceptions of life and morality and mankind were +demanded. Generations had been brought up in the faith that there were +no ideas higher than man and God. Many were reasserting the democratic +faith that the voice of the people was the voice of God. But Max +Stirner and Henrik Ibsen were gradually insinuating the idea that the +highest of all things was not mankind but the self, the individual ego, +and thus preparing the way for Nietzsche, who foretold the supersession +of man: “Man is a bridge connecting animal and superman--a bridge +thrown across a precipice.” + +But the Nietzschean idea, as I have pointed out, did not reach this +country until the later Nineties. Ibsen was the social stimulus +to revolt. His plays were being read and acted, and the idea of a +self-centred personality was generally accepted by the “intellectuals.” +“So to conduct one’s life as to realise oneself--this seems to me +the highest attainment possible to a human being,” Ibsen had written +to Björnson; and again in a letter to George Brandes he had said: +“The great thing is not to allow oneself to be frightened by the +venerableness of an institution. The state has its roots in Time: it +will have its culmination in Time. Greater things than it will fall; +all religion will fall. Neither the conceptions of morality nor those +of art are eternal. To how much are we really obliged to pin our faith? +Who will vouch for it that two and two do not make five up in Jupiter?” +Those words were written as far back as 1871, but it took twenty +years for their sense as expressed in the plays of Ibsen to be fully +appreciated. By the middle of the Nineties the attitude was so much to +the taste that many were quite ready to say, and in a way prove, that +it was not necessary to go as far as Jupiter to find two and two making +five. + +In the main, however, the majority were content to prove that two and +two made four; but they insisted upon proving it for themselves; that +the proof was already established and long since taken for granted was +quite sufficient to arouse the gravest suspicions. “Whenever people +agree with me, I always feel I must be wrong,” said Cecil Graham, in +_Lady Windermere’s Fan_, voicing a characteristic whim. This +superior attitude was, of course, far from the general attitude of +the masses. They probably knew little of those adventures among ideas +and sensations which occupied more leisured and more cultured people. +The art of shocking the middle classes existed mainly among members +of that class. It was an internal revolt. “Nothing,” said Arthur +Symons, “not even conventional virtue, is so provincial as conventional +vice; and the desire to ‘bewilder the middle classes’ is itself +middle class”: which is perfectly true, but the tendency is not to be +belittled for all that. It showed that the bourgeoisie was capable of +producing critics of itself, however distasteful these proved to be. +The earliest critics of the middle classes had always arisen within +the pale even when they had been Socialists, as in the instances of +Ferdinand Lassalle, Karl Marx and, in our own time, William Morris, +H. M. Hyndman and Bernard Shaw. The conversion to Socialism of that +genius of bewilderment, Oscar Wilde, must not be taken too seriously +from the Socialistic point of view, as to a large extent, the famous +essay on _The Soul of Man under Socialism_ was little more than +an elaborately shocking admission; for it must not be forgotten that +it was a much more daring thing to announce oneself a Socialist then +than now--it was almost as daring for a middle-class girl to go out +unchaperoned, and shocked almost as much. + +Literature was drawn into the firing line of the times. Novels and +plays not only became more outspoken, but sentences became more +epigrammatic and thoughts more paradoxical. No one could say how the +most innocent of sentences might explode in its last word, any more +than one could prophesy what somersault one’s favourite belief might +take in its latest incarnation. Surprises lurked in the most surprising +literary places as though to reflect and keep time with the reshuffling +of habits and conventions. And just as modern literature has gained in +brightness by the experience, so the adventure has familiarised us with +the need of variety in personality and of wider margins of freedom for +its expression. + + + + + CHAPTER IX + + PURPLE PATCHES AND FINE PHRASES + + “I am going to sit up all night with Reggie, saying mad scarlet + things, such as Walter Pater loves, and waking the night with + silver silences.... Come, Reggie, let us go to the smoking-room, + since we are left alone. I will be brilliant for you as I have + never been brilliant for my publishers. I will talk to you as no + character in my plays has ever talked. Come! The young Endymion + stirs in his dreams, and the pale-souled Selene watches him from + her pearly car. + + “The shadows on the lawns are violet, and the stars wash the + spaces of the sky with primrose and with crimson. The night is + old yet. Let me be brilliant, dear boy, or I feel that I shall + weep for sheer wittiness, and die, as so many have died, with + all my epigrams still in me.”--Esmé Amarinth in _The Green + Carnation_. + + +Just as the personal revolt of the decadence ran to dandyism, so its +literature reached the same goal. There were endless discussions about +“style,” and many were of the opinion that the ultimate form of a +thought, its manner of word and syntax, was the thing in itself. Words +for words’ sake was a kind of gospel, and, following the habit of Dante +Gabriel Rossetti, poets and prose-poets would devote long hours to +word-hunting. They would search through dictionaries and ancient tomes +with the hot enthusiasm of the hunter, tracking down the “unique word,” +and hoping to capture it alive for exhibition in the gardens of modern +literature. Authors with a personal style were cultivated and upheld. +The “Purple Patches” in Ruskin, Pater, and in Edward Fitzgerald’s +_Rubáiyát_ of Omar Khayyám, were relished with voluble delight. +Keats came in for a new admiration, and Rossetti’s poems satisfied +the call of the hour by the suggestive ardency of their “vagueness +and utterness,” to use words applied by George Moore to the poems of +Verlaine. The strong and deep wit of George Meredith, with its subtle +surprises, aroused even greater delight, and the meticulous prose of +Robert Louis Stevenson, with its almost feminine echoes of Meredith, +enraptured those who were just inheriting the newer culture. All this +concern for language as language, for the set and balance of words, +was not, however, entirely of native origin. It was, as in the case of +so much that was new and strange, partially derived from the French +decadent movement which was influencing the whole of Europe. + +Many years ago Théophile Gautier described the decadent style +as “ingenious, complex, learned, full of shades of meaning and +investigation, always extending the boundaries of language, borrowing +from all the technical vocabularies, taking colours from all palettes, +notes from all keyboards, forcing literary expression of that which is +most ineffable, and in form the vaguest and most fleeting outlines; +listening, that it may translate them, to the subtle confidences of +the neuropath, to the avowals of ageing and depraved passion, and to +the singular hallucinations of fixity of idea verging to madness. This +decadent style is the last effort of language to express everything to +the last extremity.” Further, he compares this style with that of the +later Roman empire, when language became “mottled with the greenness +of decomposition,” in a word, gamy (_faisandée_). But in England +literary style developed hardly more than a faint flavour of that +_gamy_ expression associated with the work of Baudelaire and +Huysmans, and it approximated more nearly to its French influences in, +as might be expected, Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley. + +One recalls many a wonderful passage in _Dorian Gray_ wherein +Oscar Wilde turned the results of his word-hunting into prose passages +entirely new to English literature: + + “He would often spend a whole day settling and re-settling in + their cases the various stones that he had collected, such + as the olive-green chrysoberyl that turns red by lamplight, + the cymophane with its wire-like line of silver, the + pistachio-coloured peridot, rose-pink and wine-yellow topazes, + carbuncles of fiery scarlet with tremulous four-rayed stars, + flame-red cinnamon stones, orange and violet spinels, and + amethysts with their alternate layers of ruby and sapphire. He + loved the red-gold of the sunstone, and the moonstone’s pearly + whiteness, and the broken rainbow of the milky opal. He procured + from Amsterdam three emeralds of extraordinary size and richness + of colour, and had a turquoise _de la vieille roche_ that + was the envy of all connoisseurs.” + +Aubrey Beardsley had so keen a sense of verbal deportment that there +is conscious style in almost every sentence he wrote. So insistent is +this sense of form that the matter of his slight literary achievement, +unusual though it is, retires before his manner. So mannered was he at +times that one questions his sincerity. It is as though he adopted a +decadent prose as a prank and awoke to find the result a masterpiece. +His preciosity is so ordered and elegant, and so deliberate in aim and +intent, that it becomes something more than a freakish whim. Could +prose, for instance, have more grace than the dedicatory epistle of +_Under the Hill_? + + “I must crave your forgiveness for addressing you in a language + other than the Roman,” he writes, “but my small freedom in + Latinity forbids me to wander beyond the idiom of my vernacular. + I would not for the world that your delicate Southern ear + should be offended by a barbarous assault of rude and Gothic + words; but methinks no language is rude that can boast polite + writers, and not a few have flourished in this country in times + past, bringing our common speech to very great perfection. In + the present age, alas! our pens are ravished by unlettered + authors and unmannered critics, that make a havoc rather than a + building, a wilderness rather than a garden. But, alack! what + boots it to drop tears upon the preterit?” + +There we have the polite writer of all time, deftly using the “conceit” +of his period with a relish appropriate enough in a writer whose +literature was a by-product of a graphic art whose every line was +fraught with strutting imagery and elegantly laboured poses. “From the +point of a precise toilet,” he writes, in the opening paragraph of the +romance, “the fingers wandered, quelling the little mutinies of cravat +and ruffle.” Again he speaks of “taper-time” and the “slender voices of +the fairies,” and of Venus standing before her mirror, “in a flutter of +frilled things,” displaying neck and shoulders “so wonderfully drawn” +and “little malicious breasts” which were “full of the irritation of +loveliness that can never be entirely comprehended, or ever enjoyed to +the utmost.” Master of the Purple Patch, Beardsley knew also how to +weave gorgeous tapestries of words delighting by their very richness: + + “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 flank 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 + Venus, for, from cap to base, each one was carved with loving + sculptures, showing such a cunning invention and such a curious + knowledge that Tannhäuser lingered not a little in reviewing + them.” + +In their search for reality, and their desire to extend the boundaries +of sensation, the writers of the Eighteen Nineties sought to capture +and steep their art in what was sensuous and luscious, in all that was +coloured and perfumed. Oscar Wilde never tired of decorating his prose +with unfamiliar imagery and incongruous colour words. He mastered every +literary fashion of the time, wielding with like skill the methods +of purple patch, preciosity, epigram, paradox and conceit. _Dorian +Gray_ is a piece of literary jewellery; peacock phrases, glowing +periods and verbal surprises embellishing every page. He speaks of the +sunlight slipping “over the polished leaves”; of “the green lacquer +leaves of the ivy”; and “the blue cloud-shadows” chasing “themselves +across the grass like swallows”; of “the stained trumpet of Tyrian +convolvulus.” “The green night of its leaves will hold its purple +stars,” he says of the clematis. An emotional change in a woman gives +him a chance of such literary efflorescence as: “A rose shook in her +blood, and shadowed her cheeks. Quick breath parted the petals of her +lips.” And the homogenic love of Michelangelo he describes as being +“carved in the coloured marbles of a sonnet-sequence.” The following +colour phrases are common throughout his works:--“nacre-coloured +air,” “apricot-coloured light,” “rose-coloured joy,” “crocus-coloured +robe,” and “sulphur-coloured roses.” “Swinging censers” are compared +with “great gilt flowers,” and he speaks of the “jade-green piles of +vegetables” in Covent Garden. + +The keen colour sense of the period manifested itself in many other +directions, particularly in certain characteristic book titles, such +as _The Yellow Book_, _Grey Roses_, _The Green Carnation_, _A Yellow +Aster_, _Green Fire_ and _The Colour of Life_. It would seem as though +the Impressionist painters had made the world more conscious of the +effects of light, and inspired writers with a desire to seek out +colour visions for themselves, although most were content to look at +the new prismatic sights through the eyes of Monet and Pissarro. In an +earlier chapter I referred to the fashion of yellow, but this colour +was not the only fashion. Green had still many devotees. Oscar Wilde +had referred to this taste as “that curious love of green which in +individuals is always the sign of subtle artistic temperament, and +in nations is said to denote a laxity if not a decadence of morals.” +Richard Le Gallienne, probably taking his cue from the foregoing famous +declaration, wrote, in _Prose Fancies_ (second series, 1896): “Green +must always have a large following among artists and art lovers; +for, as has been pointed out, an appreciation of it is a sure sign +of a subtle artistic temperament. There is something not quite good, +something almost sinister, about it--at least, in its more complex +forms, though in its simple form, as we find it in outdoor nature, +it is innocent enough; and, indeed, is it not used in colloquial +metaphor as an adjective for innocence itself? Innocence has but two +colours, white or green. But Becky Sharp’s eyes also were green, +and the green of the æsthete does not suggest innocence. There will +always be wearers of the green carnation; but the popular vogue which +green has enjoyed for the last ten or fifteen years is probably +passing. Even the æsthete himself would seem to be growing a little +weary of its indefinitely divided tones, and to be anxious for a +colour sensation somewhat more positive than those to be gained from +almost imperceptible nuances of green. Jaded with over-refinements and +super-subtleties, we seem in many directions to be harking back to +the primary colours of life. Blue, crude and unsoftened, and a form +of magenta have recently had a short innings; and now the triumph of +yellow is imminent. Of course, a love for green implies some regard for +yellow, and in our so-called æsthetic renaissance the sunflower went +before the green carnation--which is, indeed, the badge of but a small +schism of æsthetes, and not worn by the great body of the more catholic +lovers of beauty.” But an examination of the _belles lettres_ of the +period proves that neither yellow nor green predominated, but that the +average taste seemed to lead towards the sum-total and climax of all +colours--white. + +White gleamed through the most scarlet desires and the most purple +ideas of the decade, just as its experimental vices went hand in hand +with virtue. In midmost rapture of abandonment the decadents adored +innocence, and the frequent use of the idea of whiteness, with its +correlatives, silver, moonlight, starlight, ivory, alabaster and +marble, was perhaps more than half-conscious symbolism. It had also a +dash of the debauchee’s love of virginity. + +Walter Pater named a noble chapter in _Marius the Epicurean_, +“White Nights,” after the name of the house of Marius, with full +sense of the symbolic meaning of the word; and he bore out this idea +by a quotation from an old German mystic, who said: “The red rose +came first, the mystery of so-called _white_ things,” as being +“ever an afterthought--the doubles, or seconds, of real things, and +themselves but half-real, half-material--the white queen, the white +witch, the White Mass, which, as the Black Mass is a travesty of the +true Mass turned to evil by horrible old witches, is celebrated by +young candidates for the priesthood with an unconsecrated host, by way +of rehearsal.” So the idea of whiteness had relationship in the work of +decadent writers with the “so-called mystery of _white_ things.” +No other poet of the period expressed the idea of the mystery of white +innocence so immaculately as Alice Meynell: + + “She walks--the lady of my delight-- + A shepherdess of sheep. + Her flocks are thoughts. She keeps them white; + She guards them from the steep. + She feeds them on the fragrant height, + And folds them in for sleep.” + +The same idea found exponents in other poets. Francis Thompson refers +to “a fair white silence.” Ernest Dowson was dominated by a sense of +whiteness. One cannot forget his “dancing to put thy pale lost lilies +out of mind,” and _The Pierrot of the Minute_ is a veritable +symphony in white. He calls for “white music,” and the Moon Maiden +rides through the skies “drawn by a team of milk-white butterflies,” +and further on in the same poem we have a palace of many rooms: + + “Within the fairest, clad in purity, + Our mother dwelt immemorially: + Moon-calm, moon-pale, with moonstones on her gown, + The floor she treads with little pearls is sown....” + +And in another poem he sings: + + “Mark the day white on which the Fates have smiled.” + +The recognition and use of the idea of white was, of course, not always +mystical, or even symbolical; in the majority of cases it was frankly +sensuous, following in words that delight in whiteness which Whistler +had expressed in pictures. W. B. Yeats sings of the “white breast of +the dim sea,” Lionel Johnson of + + “Cloisters, in moonlight + Branching dark, or touched with white: + Round old, chill aisles, where moon-smitten + Blanches the _Orate_, written + Under each worn, old-world face + Graven on Death’s holy place!” + +Oscar Wilde refers often to white things: “She shook like a white +narcissus”; “blue petals of flame rimmed with white fire”; and “white +vultures with gilded claws.” Nor must we overlook the “milk-white” +unicorn in Aubrey Beardsley’s romance. Hubert Crackanthorpe’s purple +patches of travel, _Vignettes_, has a reference to some white +thing on almost every page--white towns, white houses, white roads +and white churches. One of the most charming of Arthur Symons’ more +artificial lyrics celebrates whiteness in girlhood: + + “White girl, your flesh is lilies + Grown ’neath a frozen moon, + So still is + The rapture of your swoon + Of whiteness, snow or lilies.” + +And one of Richard Le Gallienne’s most “precious” _Prose Fancies_ +is dedicated, under the title, “White Soul,” to the same theme in +womanhood. It is prefaced by these lines: + + “What is so white in the world, my love, + As thy maiden soul-- + The dove that flies + Softly all day within thy eyes, + And nests within thine heart at night? + Nothing so white.” + +In the first paragraph of this essay he demands with quaint conceit +the whole gamut of whiteness for the glorification of such innocence: +“Whitest paper, newest pen, ear sensitive, tremulous; heart pure and +mind open, broad and clear as the blue air for the most delicate +gossamer thoughts to wing through; and snow-white words, lily-white +words, words of ivory and pearl, words of silver and alabaster, words +white as hawthorn and daisy, words white as morning milk, words +‘whiter than Venus’ doves, and softer than the down beneath their +wings’--virginal, saintlike, nunnery words.” + +But always the outstanding literary accessory of the Nineties was +surprise, in the form of paradox, or often little more than verbal. In +the latter surprise found expression in the use of strange words, the +result of resurrections from old books or from scientific and technical +sources, the jargon of special sections of humanity, and the slang +of the streets. French words and phrases were also in great favour. +Several of the most striking verbal effects of the time were obtained +by the transposition of words from one set of ideas to another, after +the manner of Baudelaire’s theory of correspondences. Whistler was the +earliest to use the method in this country when he named pictures after +musical terms, “Symphonies,” “Harmonies” and “Arrangements.” Henley, +imitating Whistler, took the idea a step further by naming the poems +in his _London Voluntaries_, “Andante con Moto,” “Scherzando,” “Largo +e Mesto” and “Allegro Maëstoso.” From such normal manifestations of +the theory it spread through all definitely _fin de siècle_ writing +from Henry Harland’s reference to a young person who “took to rouge +and powder, and introduced _falsetto_ notes into her toilet”; George +Egerton’s firelight which picks out “autographs past emotions have +traced” on a woman’s face; to Oscar Wilde’s already quoted “coloured +marble of a sonnet-sequence.” Aubrey Beardsley’s “décolleté spirits of +astonishing conversation,” and Richard Le Gallienne’s “London spread +out beneath us like a huge black velvet flower, and rows of ant-like +fire-flies moving in slow zigzag processions along and across its +petals.” + +The use of strange words and bizarre images was but another outcome +of the prevalent desire to astonish. At no period in English history +had the obvious and the commonplace been in such disrepute. The age +felt it was complex and sought to interpret its complexities, not by +simplicity, in spite of Oscar Wilde’s statement that simplicity was the +last refuge of complexity, but by suddenness of epigram and paradox +combined with delicate nuances of expression. Literary style resembled +more than anything else a dance in quick time gradually resolving +itself into the stateliness of the minuet. So fearful were writers of +being convicted of obviousness that they often convicted themselves of +obscurity. In the same way they admired what were then considered to +be the obscurities of Meredith. Younger writers realised the need of a +suggestive note in literature. They agreed with Meredith that “the art +of the pen is to rouse the inward vision,” and instead of labouring +protracted descriptions they sought to “spring imagination with a +word or a phrase.” Literature that had been exposite became apposite. +Fine shades of meaning and niceties of observation slipped into swift +revealing sentences, and for the first time temperament was studied as +a thing in itself. The idea of Impressionism also dominated style, but +the best writers end at intensity, suggestiveness, reality and, above +all, brightness, rather than novelty, preferring to achieve this last +as a by-product. They strove to create what was called “atmosphere,” +leaving much to the intelligence of the reader, who, to do him justice, +often proved himself worthy of the compliment. Such volumes of studies +in Impressionism as George Egerton’s _Keynotes_, G. S. Street’s +_Episodes_, Hubert Crackanthorpe’s _Wreckage_, George Fleming’s +_Women’s Tragedies_, Henry Harland’s _Mademoiselle Miss_ and _The Lady +Paramount_, John Oliver Hobbes’ _Some Emotions and a Moral_, Vincent +O’Sullivan’s and--to a lesser degree--the studies of Ella d’Arcy and +H. D. Lowry are steeped in this new spirit. Whilst Max Beerbohm, Oscar +Wilde, Richard Le Gallienne, Alice Meynell and Vernon Lee distilled +their own personality into essays in the same key. The subtle intensity +of this style may be illustrated by a quotation from _Keynotes_: + + “The paleness of some strong feeling tinges her face, a slight + trembling runs through her frame. Her inner soul-struggle is + acting as a strong developing fluid upon a highly sensitised + plate; anger, scorn, pity, contempt chase one another like + shadows across her face. Her eyes rest upon the empty frame, + and the plain white space becomes alive to her. Her mind’s eye + fills it with a picture it once held in its dainty embrace. A + rare head amongst the rarest heads of men, with its crest of + hair tossed back from the great brow, its proud poise and the + impress of grand confident compelling genius that reveals itself + one scarce knows how; with the brute possibility of an untamed, + natural man lurking about the mouth and powerful throat. She + feels the subduing smile of eyes that never failed to make her + weak as a child under their gaze, and tame as a hungry bird. + She stretches out her hands with a pitiful little movement, + and then, remembering, lets them drop and locks them until the + knuckles stand out whitely. She shuts her eyes, and one tear + after the other starts from beneath her lids, trickles down her + cheeks, and drops with a splash into her lap. She does not sob, + only cries quietly and she sees, as if she held the letter in + her hand, the words that decided her fate.” + +Alice Meynell in her essays is equally modern with less emotional +themes as, for instance, in the opening essay of her volume _The +Colour of Life_: + + “Red has been praised for its nobility as the colour of life. + But the true colour of life is not red. Red is the colour of + violence or of life broken, edited and published. Or if red + is indeed the colour of life, it is so only on condition that + it is not seen. Once fully visible, red is the colour of life + violated, and in the act of betrayal and of waste. Red is + the secret of life, and not the manifestation thereof. It is + one of the things the value of which is secrecy, one of the + talents that are to be hidden in a napkin. The true colour of + life is the colour of the body, the colour of the covered red, + the implicit and not explicit red of the living heart and the + pulses. It is the modest colour of the unpublished blood.” + +The arts of epigram and paradox with their repeated surprises were +so commanded by the genius of Oscar Wilde that others who followed +in his steps tended to appear like imitators. There is something +preposterous and irresistibly funny about his wittiest half truth, and +the best of his statements were often no more than that. “One of those +characteristic British faces that, once seen, are never remembered,” is +a good specimen of Wilde’s method, with such sayings as: “Brute reason +is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is +hitting below the intellect”; and “Her capacity for family affection +is extraordinary. When her third husband died, her hair turned quite +gold from grief,” and “In married life three is company and two is +none”; and “Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast”; and again +“One can resist everything except temptation.” The fun of such sayings +does not only depend upon the shock of half truth, they contain also +a wild philosophy which is irresistible because it defies immediate +refutation by sheer brightness. Wilde created a fashion in such +sayings; the word “brilliant” was appropriately used to describe them, +and their popularity created a widely practised game of intellectual +frivolity. It was not fashionable, as the saying went, “to take +yourself seriously,” and the verbal cleverness invented by Oscar Wilde +was adopted cheerfully as a mask for the seriousness of life. + +One writer whose gifts of wit were at all comparable with those of +Oscar Wilde had the courage to use his brilliance to throw light on a +definite moral purpose. The attitude he adopted was in the nature of +a Puritan reply to the paganism of Wilde, and he used similar weapons +with equal skill, drama and fiction, conversation and oratory, flashing +sharp with a more solid intention. “Better see rightly on a pound a +week,” he said, “than squint on a million.” “Freedom,” he said again, +“means responsibility; that’s why most people fear it.” There was +something more than cleverness in such sayings, something more than +art. Bernard Shaw, who uttered them, brought with him an atmosphere +of conviction. That attitude insisted upon art and cleverness being +discontented with themselves; it strove to bring intellect back once +more from the contemplation of itself to the realisation of a more +orderly life. + + + + + CHAPTER X + + THE DISCOVERY OF THE CELT + + “Strange reversals, strange fulfilments may lie on the lap of + the gods, but we have no knowledge of these, and hear neither + the high laughter nor the far voices. But we front a possible + because a spiritual destiny greater than the height of imperial + fortunes, and have that which may send our voices further than + the trumpets of east and west. Through ages of slow westering, + till now we face the sundown seas, we have learned in continual + vicissitude that there are secret ways whereon armies cannot + march. And this has been given to us, a more ardent longing, a + more rapt passion in the things of outward beauty and in the + things of spiritual beauty. Nor it seems to me is there any + sadness, or only the serene sadness of a great day’s end, that, + to others, we reveal in our best the genius of a race whose + farewell is in a tragic lighting of torches of beauty around its + grave.” + + FIONA MACLEOD. + + +Ernest Renan discovered the Celt somewhere about the year 1856; but +in the year 1891 Grant Allen made the far more interesting discovery +that there was such a thing as a Celtic movement in English art. In a +vivacious article in _The Fortnightly Review_ he made it seem as +if the Celtic influence dominated the field of artistic activity. “The +return wave of Celtic influence over Teutonic or Teutonised England has +brought with it many strange things, good, bad, and indifferent.” He +wrote: + + “It has brought with it Home Rule, Land Nationalisation, + Socialism, Radicalism, the Reverend Hugh Price Hughes, the + Tithes War, the Crofter Question, the Plan of Campaign. It + has brought fresh forces into political life--the eloquent + young Irishman, the perfervid Highland Scot, the enthusiastic + Welshman, the hard-headed Cornish miner: Methodism, Catholicism, + the Eisteddfod, the parish priest, New Tipperary, the Hebrides, + the Scotland Division of Liverpool; Conybeare, Cunninghame + Graham, Michael Davitt, Holyoake; Co-operation, the Dockers, + _The Star_, the Fabians. Powers hitherto undreamt of surge + up in our parliamentary world in the Sextons, the Healys, the + Atherley Joneses, the McDonalds, the O’Briens, the Dillons, + the Morgans, the Abrahams; in our wider public life in the + William Morrises, the Annie Besants, the Father Humphreys, + the Archbishop Crokes, the General Booths, the Alfred Russel + Wallaces, the John Stuart Blackies, the Joseph Arches, the + Bernard Shaws, the John Burnses; the People’s Palace, the Celtic + Society of Scotland, the Democratic Federation, the Socialist + League. Anybody who looks over any great list of names in any of + the leading modern movements in England--from the London County + Council to the Lectures at South Place--will see in a moment + that the New Radicalism is essentially a Celtic product. The + Celt in Britain, like Mr Burne Jones’s enchanted princess, has + lain silent for ages in an enforced long sleep; but the spirit + of the century, pushing aside the weeds and briars of privilege + and caste, has set free the sleeper at last....” + +Sufficiently matter-of-fact in his assertions, Grant Allen’s enthusiasm +was just a little premature. But he was only a year or so too early, +and if he had stayed his pen a little while he would have been able to +announce the real Celtic revival of the Nineties which received its +first strong impetus from the genius of William Butler Yeats. + +The Celtic movement as expressed in the various fields of activity +named by Grant Allen was at the dawn of the Eighteen Nineties quite +free of self-consciousness. It was not really a “movement” at all; +and even where Grant Allen correctly indicates Celtic influence, that +influence is the accidental outcome of the fact that those who were +responsible for it happened to have been Celts or to have had Celtic +blood in their veins. In many of his examples it would have been of +equal pertinence to trace Teutonic or Latin influences. The real Celtic +revival, as a revival, began with the Irish Literary movement. W. B. +Yeats published his first book of poems in Dublin in 1885; but it was +not until he issued _The Wanderings of Oisin, and Other Poems_, in +1889, that a new voice singing a song as old as time was recognised. +With the publication of _The Countess Kathleen_, in 1892, and +the _Celtic Twilight_, in 1893, this new voice was hailed as +something more than new; it was hailed as a strong and persuasive +voice that was already attracting to itself affinities in the land of +its origin. Among these were Dr Douglas Hyde, Lady Gregory, George +Russell (A.E.), Lionel Johnson, John Eglinton and, later, and with +less certainty from the Celtic standpoint, George Moore. Dr Douglas +Hyde and Lady Gregory were devoting their attention to the ancient +legends and songs of Ireland, and their studies ultimately resulted in +the publication of books such as the _Love Songs of Connacht_ and +_Gods and Fighting Men_. George Russell and W. B. Yeats linked up +the natural mysticism of the Celt with Theosophy, besides contributing +to the movement poems of rare beauty. John Eglinton worked along lines +of philosophic interpretation which he expressed in _Two Essays on +the Remnant_, published in 1895. George Moore introduced an equally +Celtic sense of fact into a movement which might otherwise have been a +record of dreams. + +In 1891 W. B. Yeats founded the National Literary Society, which, +seven years later, brought into existence the Irish Literary Theatre +at Dublin. The object of the Irish Literary Theatre was first and +foremost to create a medium for the production of “something better +than the ordinary play of commerce,” and by so doing to augment the +chances of a native Irish dramatic renaissance. The first performances +of the society took place in 1899, when two plays, _The Countess +Kathleen_, by W. B. Yeats, and _The Heather Field_, by Edward +Martyn, were produced at the Antient Concert Rooms, Dublin. Next year +the Irish Literary Theatre produced five plays at the Gaiety Theatre, +Dublin. These were: _The Bending of the Bough_, by George Moore; +_The Last Feast of the Fraima_, by Alice Milligan; _Mæeve_, +by Edward Martyn. In 1901 at the same theatre were produced _Diarmuid +and Grania_, by W. B. Yeats and George Moore; and a Gaelic play, +_The Twisting of the Rope_, by Douglas Hyde. These performances +closed the first attempt in Ireland to create a national drama. During +its brief life, the Irish Literary Theatre recorded its views and +achievements in an occasional publication called _Beltaine_ +(1899–1900), which was the forerunner of _Samhain_, as the Irish +Literary Theatre was of the National Theatre Society Ltd., and its +famous playhouse in Abbey Street, Dublin. The dramatic and literary +awakening in Ireland found expression in the local Press, _The Daily +Express_ of Dublin devoting considerable space to the discussion +of literature and art, to which most of the young Irish writers +contributed. + +Side by side with the development of the Celtic revival in Ireland +there were Celtic awakenings of a lesser degree in Scotland and Wales. +The chief activity of the Scottish revival was at Edinburgh, where +Patrick Geddes produced four numbers of a quarterly review called the +_Evergreen_ in 1895 and 1896. The idea seemed to be to make each +number complete in itself and so to arrange the contents that they +should serve as comments on art and life apropos the four seasons. +Among the literary contributors are found the names of Patrick Geddes, +Sir Noel Paton, S. R. Crockett, William Sharp, “Fiona Macleod,” Sir +George Douglas, Riccardo Stephens and Gabriel Setoun. The French +communist, Élisée Reclus, was also a contributor. All the decorations +were in black and white, and the artists included Pittendrigh +Macgillivray, John Duncan, E. A. Hornel and James Cadenhead. + +The most important literary product of the Celtic revival in Scotland +was the work of the mysterious personality “Fiona Macleod,” whom we +now know to have been the novelist and critic, William Sharp. “Fiona +Macleod’s” first volume, _Pharais; a Romance of the Isles_, was +published by Moray, of Derby, in 1894; other works from the same pen, +such as _The Washer of the Ford_, were published by Patrick Geddes +and Colleagues, at Edinburgh. The work of “Fiona Macleod” possessed all +the more pronounced characteristics of Celtic art, with an insistence +upon mystical aloofness so deliberate as to suggest a determination to +be Celtic at all costs; a pose carried off successfully only by rare +literary skill. + +The movement in Wales was far less definite. There was a decided +quickening of social consciousness among the Celts, which expressed +itself in ardent political activities of a Radical tendency. The +extreme section was represented by the Labour leader, “Mabon,” but +the main current of the national political genius found its fullest +expression in the vigorous personality of a rising young politician, +Lloyd George, who was later to become the chief protagonist of Joseph +Chamberlain during the Jingo outbreak of the final years of the decade. +Literary activity was confined to a renewed interest in national myth +and tradition, an interest aroused by the magnificent collection of +legends made by Lady Charlotte Guest in _The Mabinogian_. But +there was no distinctive modern art or literary production. The Welsh +poetic renaissance, save for such hints as are to be found in the poems +of Ernest Rhys, was unborn, and Wales was still under the impression +that all things associated with the theatre were evil; a view that was +not to be altered until well into the present century. + +These various expressions of the Celtic renaissance, rather than those +indicated by Grant Allen, were in the true tradition of that Celtic +spirit first interpreted by Ernest Renan in _The Poetry of the Celtic +Races_. Speaking of that race he says: + + “Its history is itself one long lament; it still recalls its + exiles, its flights across the seas. If at times it seems to be + cheerful, a tear is not slow to glisten behind its smile; it + does not know that strange forgetfulness of human conditions + and destinies which is called gaiety. Its songs of joy end as + elegies; there is nothing to equal the delicious sadness of + its national melodies. One might call them emanations from on + high which, falling drop by drop upon the soul, pass through + it like memories of another world. Never have men feasted so + long upon these solitary delights of the spirit, these poetic + memories which simultaneously intercross all the sensation of + life, so vague, so deep, so penetrative, that one might die from + them, without being able to say whether it was from bitterness + or sweetness.... The essential element of the Celt’s poetic + life is the _adventure_--that is to say, the pursuit of + the unknown, an endless quest after an object ever flying from + desire. It was of this that St Brandam dreamed, that Peredur + sought with his mystic chivalry, that Knight Owen asked of his + subterranean journeyings. This race desires the infinite, it + thirsts for it, and pursues it at all costs, beyond the tomb, + beyond hell itself.” + +The most profound and the most effective interpreter of that view +of life in modern British literature is W. B. Yeats. It was he who +was the chief figure of the Celtic Renaissance of the Eighteen +Nineties; the artists, writers and politicians named by Grant Allen +were Celts playing the Teutonic game, and winning. In Yeats we have +the fullest expression of the intellectual Celt--poet, mystic and +patriot--expressing himself in an imaginative propaganda which has +affected the thoughts and won the appreciation of the English-speaking +world. + +He was born in Dublin in the year 1866, the son of the Irish painter +J. B. Yeats, R.H.A. Educated chiefly in the city of his birth, he +was probably helped in the ripening of his genius by frequent visits +to relatives in County Sligo, where, among a peasantry intimate with +ghosts, fairies and demons, he laid the foundations of a wide knowledge +of the more remote characteristics and traditions of his countrymen. +Ireland was his home until 1887. Later, the Yeats family went to +London, and during the Nineties he lived partly in the English capital +and partly in the Irish. His aim in promoting the Irish Literary +movement was the outcome of the idea that for Ireland “a national +drama or literature must spring from a native interest in life and +its problems, and a strong capacity for life among the people.” So by +studying and translating the Gaelic legends, rescuing and recording in +literary form the folk-tales of the countryside, and inspiring Irish +writers and artists to interpret the national individuality rather +than that of alien lands, he hoped to crystallise the scattered forces +of Gaelic energy, and thus make a literature that would stand towards +Ireland as the literature of the Shakespearean period stands towards +England. To make, in short, the literature and art of Ireland both +national and quick with a life that might be felt not merely by a +select coterie of cultured enthusiasts, but by the whole nation. + +Working for this idea, Yeats gathered around him, as we have seen, all +that was most hopeful in modern Irish letters. The result to-day is +that Ireland is no longer a geographical expression with a clamorous +voice; Ireland to-day stands among the nations as a race with a +literature and drama expressing its inmost spiritual, intellectual +and social needs. In all save the fact that this literature and drama +uses a language which Ireland, with the rest of the British Empire and +America, owes to the Anglo-Saxon, it is essentially Irish in aim and +expression. And, incidentally, it has gone a long way towards exploding +the idea that the genius of Ireland found complete expression in the +_Irish Melodies_ of Tom Moore and the melodramatic heroes of Dion +Boucicault. “Our legends,” says W. B. Yeats, “are always associated +with places, and not merely every mountain and valley, but every +strange stone and little coppice has its legend, preserved in written +or unwritten tradition. Our Irish romantic movement has arisen out +of this tradition, and should always, even when it makes new legends +about traditional people and things, be haunted by people and places. +It should make Ireland, as Ireland and all other lands were in ancient +times, a holy land to her own people.” + +Yeats, with Maeterlinck, and other foreign symbolists, filled his song +and drama with the possibility of unexpected happenings. These works +are steeped in a different atmosphere from that in which we ordinarily +move. They dare to be unreasonable; to go where Caolte “tosses his +burning hair,” and Niam calls: + + “Away, come away; + And brood no more where the fire is bright; + Filling thy heart with a mortal dream; + For breasts are heaving and eyes a-gleam; + Away, come away, to the dim twilight.” + +In such imaginative abandon there is possibility of discovery and +adventure. America was not discovered by Columbus sailing into +uncharted seas, but by the imaginative impulse that foretold continents +over the rim of the known world. So it is that the Celtic dreaming, +made articulate by Yeats and others, contains in its suggestive +darknesses more wisdom than subservience to known things and known +experiences have contributed to men. The Celts have realised, by +intuition rather than by reason, what all people of simple imagination +have realised, that life, as Renan says of the Breton, is not a +personal adventure undertaken by each man on his own account, but a +link in a long chain, a gift received and handed on. In addition to +this idea of tradition, the British Celt has realised and reasserted +the further idea of experience by individual adventure. W. B. Yeats +is distinguished among Celtic writers because of this sense of +individuality. His work is not merely pensive and wonder-stricken +in the manner of much traditional Celtic art; it is thoughtful and +joyful, possessing a strength born of personal happiness and individual +wonder. In the retelling of the tales of his nation he has added much +of himself to that which “it has taken generations to invent,” and he +has come nearer towards stimulating the creation of a noble popular +literature than anyone in Ireland since the simple tales and legends of +Finn and Oisin were the commonplaces of the national mind. + +There was a wizardry about his songs quite new to contemporary Ireland. +His choice of words was full of a vague glimmering of unknown things, +while his rhythm haunted the mind with the peculiar insistence of songs +which have stood age-long tests of familiarity. But the matter was +strange to customary hearing, it was redolent of + + “The dim wisdoms old and deep + That God gives unto men in sleep.” + +Celtic dependence upon the intimation of the inner consciousness, +however, did not draw him away from familiar things and more obvious +but none the less profound sensations. He was engaged quite as +often with the simpler concerns of sentiment, with the home and the +affections of the more human among human beings, with “the cry of a +child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart, the heavy steps of +the ploughman, splashing the wintry mould.” + +His tales, like his verses, are coloured by myth and folklore, +mysticism and magic. All the stories in _The Secret Rose_ and +_The Celtic Twilight_ hinge their interest upon something outside +mundane experiences. Many are little more than simple records of tales +he has been told by the country folk in the more remote districts of +Ireland. “I have written down accurately and candidly,” he says, in +the preface to _The Celtic Twilight_, “as much as I have heard +and seen and, except by way of commentary, nothing that I have merely +imagined. I have been at no pains to separate my own beliefs from those +of the peasantry, but have rather let my men and women, ghouls and +faeries, go their way unoffended or defended by any argument of mine. +The things a man has heard and seen are threads of life, and if he +pulled them carefully from the confused distaff of memory, any who will +can weave them into whatever garment of belief please them best.” The +garment of belief which the poet has woven about these old tales is one +of the most successful expressions of the literary renaissance of the +Nineties. + +Anglo-Saxons are not usually interested in a peasant’s vague +experiences in the twilight margin of the West, but they are concerned +as to the nature of such experiences. They appreciate the unreal in the +dullest ghost story. They recognise the thrill in the shallowest yarn +of the ghost-seer, even though the cause be no more mysterious than the +desire of a domestic animal for human society, or some white-smocked +and bibulous peasant mistaking the churchyard for the king’s highway. +But to hear of the doings of Celtic peasants in the language of W. +B. Yeats is to hear something that interests beyond the limits of a +mere tale. Some of his stories deal frankly with the mysterious as it +appeals to the devotee of magic, and some of them have an imaginative +atmosphere recalling Edgar Allan Poe. Such are the stories of Michael +Robartes in _The Secret Rose_ and _The Tables of the Law_. +In the plays, also, similar themes recur, expressed in the drama’s +convention of conflict between experience and idea. Here Yeats is more +akin to Maeterlinck, although there is always that national note which +is nowhere apparent in the work of the Belgian symbolist. _Pelleas +and Mélisande_ belongs to no country and all countries, but _The +Countess Kathleen_ belongs first to Ireland--and then to humanity. + + + + + CHAPTER XI + + THE MINOR POET + + +The term “minor poet” is inexact at best, but during the Eighteen +Nineties it was used very widely, and a little unnecessarily, to +distinguish the younger generation of poets from the generation still +represented by Tennyson, Swinburne, William Morris, George Meredith, +and from among whom Robert Browning and Dante Gabriel Rossetti were +but lately removed. The distinction, like the term “decadent,” began +as a disparagement and, despite well-meaning protests, it lived on +with a difference. Richard Le Gallienne lectured on “The Minor Poet,” +proving him of importance; and many critics were of the same mind, +including William Archer. In the preface to _Poets of the Younger +Generation_, a book written in 1899, but not published until 1902, +owing to the outbreak of the Boer War, he said: “Criticism has made +great play with the supercilious catchword ‘minor poet.’ No one denies, +of course, that there are greater and lesser lights in the firmament of +song; but I do most strenuously deny that the lesser lights, if they be +stars at all and not mere factitious fireworks, deserve to be spoken of +with contempt. Now a shade of contempt has certainly attached of late +years to the term ‘minor poet,’ which has given it a depressing and +sterilising effect.” + +Zeal to stigmatise a calumny has here led to over-statement of its +effect. The very book in which the above words appear, with its +excellent review of the work of thirty-three poets, disproves at least +any suggestion of sterilising results; and, though the survey is +both comprehensive and catholic, one might add without much fear of +cavil the names of another twelve poets or more to William Archer’s +hierarchy. The truth of the matter is that the poets so labelled were +indifferent to the term; but less discerning members of the reading +public may have suffered by allowing it to prejudice them against +new poetry which was certainly in the tradition of the great British +bards. Indeed, it is not easy to discover another decade in which +English literature possessed so numerous and so meritorious a body of +young poets. There were splendid outbursts of song in the Elizabethan +and Caroline epochs, and another in the early years of the nineteenth +century, when such poetic planets as Wordsworth, Byron, Coleridge, +Keats and Shelley swam into human ken, but I know of no other decade +with such a variety and ebullience of song as that under review. How +much of it will survive the test of the passing years no critical +judgment can say; nor is that our concern. The future will have its +own tastes and its own criteria. It is our business to recognise that, +according to existing standards and modern predilections, the Nineties +were prodigal of poets and distinguished in poems. + +Already several of the so-called minor poets of the time have won +something like the indisputableness of classics. Every survey of recent +poetry takes willing and serious account of Francis Thompson, Ernest +Dowson, Lionel Johnson and John Davidson; and for greater reasons +than that these poets are no longer living. Unhesitating also is the +recognition of William Watson, Alice Meynell, A. E. Housman, Henry +Newbolt and W. B. Yeats. There may be some who would still withhold +the bays from Rudyard Kipling, as there are others who deal niggardly +justice to Stephen Phillips, whose poetic achievement is higher than +the valuation of the moment, if lower than that of the time when he +gave us _Christ in Hades_, _Marpessa_, and _Paolo and Francesca_: poems +surely destined to outlive detraction and neglect. + +But the natural acceptance of such poets only touches the fringe of +the _fin de siècle_ fabric of song. The second decade of the +new century sustains a lively interest in many poets who might well +have been considered local to the last decade of the old. Some of +them, though lacking nothing in individuality, sing with an accent +so much in tune with the “divine average” of culture and experience +that some sort of permanence is assured to their work in special +fanes of poesy, if not in the broader avenues of popular acceptance. +Among such poets may be named Laurence Binyon, H. C. Beeching, F. B. +Money-Coutts, E. Nesbit, Laurence Housman, Herbert Trench, Margaret L. +Woods, “Michael Field,” Sturge Moore, Charles Dalmon, Selwyn Image, +Dollie Radford, Ernest Radford, Norman Gale, George Santayana and +Rosamund Marriott-Watson. And finally there remain those poets who give +expression to moods more attuned to end-of-the-century emotions, but +who will command a select group of admirers in most periods. In this +class are Arthur Symons, Richard Le Gallienne, John Gray, Lord Alfred +Douglas, Theodore Wratislaw and Olive Custance. + +In spite, however, of what has been said, the term “minor” applied to +poetry came to be something more than a formal expression of contempt. +The contempt it expressed was associated with the prevailing, though +half-amused, antagonism of the middle classes towards the decadent +movement in art and life. Calling the new poetry “minor” was, from the +point of view of literary criticism, hitting below the belt, for the +term really conveyed a moral meaning beneath a literary demonstration +of force. Opposition to the younger poets may at times have taken the +form of genuine literary criticism, but the voice of disapproval at its +loudest lay in ethics rather than letters. Owen Seaman made exquisite +fun of the younger generation of poets, particularly of + + “A precious few, the heirs of utter godlihead, + Who wear the yellow flower of blameless bodlihead!” + +in _The Battle of the Bays_, and in a satirical poem, “To a Boy-Poet of +the Decadence,” he indicates precisely the type of poet who came to be +regarded as minor, and the sort of objection he aroused: + + “The erotic affairs that you fiddle aloud + Are as vulgar as coin of the mint; + And you merely distinguish yourself from the crowd + By the fact that you put ’em in print. + + * * * * * + + For your dull little vices we don’t care a fig, + It is _this_ that we deeply deplore: + You were cast for a common or usual pig, + But you play the invincible bore.” + +Here there are direct inferences of erotic tendencies in the younger +poets, as though such things were so unusual in youthful verse as to +be startling, instead of being recognised as characteristics of all +adolescent poetry. Be that as it may, “erotic affairs” may or may +not be vulgar or dull. In the hands of a Baudelaire or a Gautier, +a Swinburne or a Rossetti, they may offend--but not necessarily by +vulgarity or dullness. Neither were the best of the minor poets +vulgar or dull. Their eroticism may have been irritating, disturbing, +offensive or disgusting, but it was often unique, and always +sufficiently juvenescent and impudent to be bright. But the younger +poets did not all err on the side of eroticism, and some of those who +had other enthusiasms were ready enough to criticise and repudiate +their fellows in song. Richard Le Gallienne, who, himself, was usually, +and unjustly, classed with the degenerates, showed small sympathy with +that type in “The Decadent to his Soul.” In the course of this poem he +defines very clearly the attitude adopted by at least one poet of the +time towards what was conventionally decadent: + + “Then from that day, he used his soul + As bitters to the over dulcet sins, + As olives to the fatness of the feast-- + She made those dear heart-breaking ecstasies + Of minor chords amid the Phrygian flutes, + She sauced his sins with splendid memories, + Starry regrets and infinite hopes and fears; + His holy youth and his first love + Made pearly background to strange-coloured vice.” + +And Lionel Johnson, who was neither decadent nor minor, contributed +a prose satire on the same subject to the first number of _The +Pageant_. It is called “Incurable,” and deals rather heavily with +that phase of youthful introspection which tends to brood on love and +suicide. But his decadent poet is better represented by examples of +the work attributed to him. Here is a faithful imitation of the minor +mode with satire so well concealed that, in the Nineties, it might +easily have passed for the real thing: + + “Sometimes, in very joy of shame, + Our flesh becomes one living flame: + And she and I + Are no more separate, but the same. + + Ardour and agony unite; + Desire, delirium, delight: + And I and she + Faint in the fierce and fevered night. + + Her body music is: and ah! + The accords of lute and viola, + When she and I + Play on live limbs love’s opera.” + +There were poets, I say, who might well have been represented by +the above parody. Arthur Symons (in his earlier phase too often a +Restoration poet _malgré lui_) played the part of minor poet of +the minute with something like desperation: + + “Her cheeks are hot, her cheeks are white; + The white girl hardly breathes to-night, + So faint the pulses come and go, + That waken to a smouldering glow + The morbid faintness of her white. + + What drowsing heats of sense, desire + Longing and languorous, the fire + Of what white ashes, subtly mesh + The fascinations of her flesh + Into a breathing web of fire? + + Only her eyes, only her mouth, + Live, in the agony of drouth, + Athirst for that which may not be: + The desert of virginity + Aches in the hotness of her mouth.” + +And among all his earlier poems you can find innumerable manifestations +of the decadent reversion to artificiality, as in the lines: + + “Divinely rosy rogued, your face + Smiles, with its painted little mouth, + Half tearfully, a quaint grimace; + The charm and pathos of your youth + Mock the mock roses of your face.” + +Such variations upon love were by no means new to poetry even in this +country. Swinburne and Rossetti had been roundly trounced by Robert +Buchanan for venturing as far but no farther, and the minor poets +of the Nineties suffered similar attacks from their own outraged +contemporaries. Generally speaking, this erotic verse lacked the magic +of fine poetry, and to that extent it was minor or, rather, not poetry +at all. It was verse, and often, let it be admitted, very good verse, +but only in the work of Ernest Dowson did it possess the high-wrought +intensity and indefinable glamour of poetry. + +The veritable minor note of the poetry of these years was not, +strangely enough, that sought out for denunciation and satire by the +bourgeoisie. The eroticism which became so prevalent in the verse of +the younger poets was minor because it was little more than a pose; not +because it was erotic. It was minor because it was the swan song of the +Fleshly School of the Seventies and Eighties. It did not ring true: for +one reason because it was an affectation, and for another because it +was perhaps a little too much like the life the decadents were trying +to live. Only a respectable person, like Swinburne, could write a +really profound decadent love poem. + +Where the minor poets were both minor and poets was in that curious +lisping note which many of them managed to introduce into their poems. +This was a new note in poetry, corresponding with the minor key in +music. It was not polish or style, nor metrical, nor alliterative trick +or experiment. Neither was it entirely that fashionable sensitiveness, +which, in its ultimate search for unknown, unexperienced reality, +often resulted in a sterile perversity. It approximated more to that +ultra-refinement of feeling, that fastidiousness of thought which, in +its over-nice concern for fine shades and precious meanings, becomes +bleak and cheap. There was an unusual femininity about it; not the +femininity of women, nor yet the feminine primness of men; it was more +a mingling of what is effeminate in both sexes. This was the genuine +minor note, and it was abnormal--a form of hermaphroditism. But it +has left no single poem as a monument to itself. It was never so near +corporeality as that. It was a passing mood which gave the poetry of +the hour a hot-house fragrance; a perfume faint yet unmistakable and +strange. And now, as then, it lives only in stray “gillyflowers of +speech,” recording, perchance, “a bruisèd daffodil of last night’s +sin,” to borrow phrases from the early poems of Richard Le Gallienne, +who affected these mincing measures as thoroughly as he has since +followed a more virile muse. + +Again, when the minor poet was most minor, he always contrived to +clothe his verse in gracious language which had full power to charm by +its ingenuity and beauty. If the minor mode forbade its devotees to +trespass far beyond the borders of fancy; if it prevented prettiness +becoming beauty, we need not complain. Fancy and Prettiness never +sought to dethrone Imagination and Beauty, but to support and serve +them like good courtiers, and so the minor poets of the Nineties served +Art and Life. + +Yet so myopic was the literary vision that ephemeral verses were +classed as minor with the strong and normal lyricism of William +Watson’s: + + “Let me go forth, and share + The overflowing Sun + With one wise friend, or one + Better than wise, being fair, + Where the peewit wheels and dips + On heights of bracken and ling, + And Earth, unto her finger tips, + Tingles with the Spring.” + +Or with the wistful beauty of W. B. Yeats’ + + “When you are old and grey and full of sleep + And nodding by the fire, take down this book, + And slowly read, and dream of the soft look + Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; + + How many loved your moments of glad grace, + And loved your beauty with love false and true; + But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, + And loved the sorrows of your changing face. + + And bending down beside the glowing bars, + Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled + And paced upon the mountains overhead, + And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.” + +Or Richard Le Gallienne’s beautiful lines: + + “She’s somewhere in the sunlight strong, + Her tears are in the falling rain, + She calls me in the wind’s soft song, + And with the flowers she comes again.” + +Or with some such happy song as Norman Gale’s + + “All the lanes are lyric + All the bushes sing, + You are at your kissing, + Spring!” + +Or the more tragic theme of Francis Money-Coutts: + + “Oft in the lapses of the night, + When dead things live and live things die, + I touch you with a wild affright + Lest you have ceased in sleep to sigh.” + +And later even with Stephen Phillips’ _Christ in Hades_: + + “It is the time of tender, opening things. + Above my head the fields murmur and wave, + And breezes are just moving the clear heat. + O the mid-noon is trembling on the corn, + On cattle calm, and trees in perfect sleep, + And hast thou empty come? Hast thou not brought + Even a blossom with the noise of rain + And smell of earth about it, that we all + Might gather round and whisper over it? + At one wet blossom all the dead would feel!” + +And the higher and deeper simplicity of A. E. Housman: + + “With rue my heart is laden + For golden friends I had, + For many a rose-lipt maiden + And many a lightfoot lad. + + By brooks too broad for leaping + The lightfoot boys are laid; + The rose-lipt girls are sleeping + In fields where roses fade.” + +All these were classed as lesser poems--and so they are, beside the +best of Shakespeare, Milton, Shelley, Keats and the best work of those +few other high lords of song; but with the rest they may claim kin, and +ever remain in goodly company. + + [Illustration: A. E. HOUSMAN + + _From a Drawing by William Rothenstein_] + + + + + CHAPTER XII + + FRANCIS THOMPSON + + +The wave of Catholicism which swept over the art world of the closing +years of the nineteenth century reached its poetic fulness in the +work of Francis Thompson. Contemporary with him were Ernest Dowson, +Lionel Johnson and John Gray, and, although each was inspired by the +same spiritual forces to reassert in song their faith in traditional +Christianity, none of them had his bigness of vision. Few poets, +indeed, of any time, have surpassed his technical skill or the +prodigality of his literary inventiveness; but, beyond that, the spirit +of the hour breathed into his verse a new avowal of mysticism, and it +informed his orthodoxy with so sweet and beautiful a sense of life that +those who were old in the convention of Rome must have marvelled at the +beauty of their inheritance. + +Francis Thompson, product as he is of the poetic impulsion of the +Nineties, cannot be located there, as one can locate so many of the +poets of the time. He is not estranged from neighbouring decades, like +Ernest Dowson and John Gray, by a fortuitous decadence of mood, but +rather does he partake of the endless current of the years and of the +eternal normalities. Those who care to discover obvious resemblances +among poets have compared him, fittingly enough, with Crashaw, Vaughan +and Herbert, and other seventeenth-century mystical singers, and +sometimes as though he had been influenced by them. Yet it is known +that he resembled such poets before he had made himself acquainted +with their works. Francis Thompson is, of course, just one more +manifestation of the eternal mystery of faith, and in his greatness he +is of no time and all time. Those resemblances with the past have no +more to do with the average magnificence of his genius and his work +than the minor novelties of thought and expression which may remind +us of his corporeal moment. To the latter I must refer, and with more +excuse than that demanded by the scope of this book, for there is much +in his life and art which links him with, without confining him to, his +period. + + [Illustration: FRANCIS THOMPSON (LIFE MASK, 1905) + + _From the Photograph by Sherril Schell_] + +The son of a doctor, Francis Thompson was born at Preston on 18th +December 1859. His father and mother, and two paternal uncles, +were converts to the Roman Catholic religion; both uncles were +associated with letters, one as professor of English literature at +the Catholic University, Dublin, and later as sub-editor of _The +Dublin Review_, and author of several devotional tracts, and the +other as the author of a volume of poems. Francis was educated in the +Catholic faith, and sent to Ushaw College with some idea of ultimate +priesthood; but that intention must have been abandoned, for at the age +of seventeen he was a reluctant student of medicine at Owens College, +Manchester. Six years were devoted to this work when, repeated attempts +to take a degree proving abortive, a medical career was abandoned. +He expressed no desire to live by writing, although he was an ardent +student of literature, with a particular affection for Æschylus, +William Blake and De Quincey. Several unsuccessful attempts were made +by him to earn a living in various employments, but in 1885, stung by +his father’s reproaches, Thompson left Preston and walked to London. +For three years he lived unknown, generally in degrees of poverty +and destitution. He was employed variously and at odd times; once as +a bootmaker’s assistant in Leicester Square, again as a publisher’s +“collector.” In 1888 he sent two poems, “The Passion of Mary” and +“Dream Tryst,” and a prose essay, “Paganism Old and New,” copied out +on ragged scraps of paper, to _Merry England_. This act proved +a turning-point in his career, for the editor, Wilfrid Meynell, +recognising the extraordinary quality of the work submitted to him, not +only published it, but sought out the author, who had given the vague +address of Charing Cross Post Office; and, having found him, became +his lifelong friend and, in course of time, his literary executor and +the far-seeing guardian of his fame. + +So poor was Francis Thompson during his early London days that even +writing materials were beyond his means, and some old half-used +account-books, given to him by the Leicester Square bootmaker, were a +windfall, enabling him to translate to more enduring form something +of the richness of his mind. But he was not a writer in the ordinary +sense. His desire to harvest his dreams was intermittent at best, +and, in after years, friendly editors were at great pains to extract +commissioned work from him. At the same time he did make some attempt +at publicity, as the sending of manuscripts to Mr Wilfrid Meynell +would prove. The results were not, however, always so fortunate, for +in the following year his essay on “Shelley” was rejected by _The +Dublin Review_. Nearly twenty years later the essay was discovered +among the poet’s papers by his literary executor, and, as we know, +_The Dublin Review_ was enabled to make amends. During his own +life Thompson published three volumes: _Poems_ (1893), _Sister +Songs_ (1895) and _New Poems_ (1897). He contributed poems and +reviews to several publications, notably to _The Academy_, under +the editorship of Lewis Hind, who was one of the earliest to give +practical recognition to his genius. + +It was not easy to befriend such a man as Francis Thompson. For years +he had taken opium, which set up a paralysis of the social will and +made him tragically indifferent to the most elementary amenities of +life. His friends induced him, especially when he was too ill to resist +their kind offices, to leave the estranged city ways, and thus there +are oases in his sordid outer life--in hospitals; at the house of +Wilfrid and Alice Meynell; at Storrington, in Sussex, where he wrote +most of the poems in his first volume; and, later, near the Franciscan +monastery at Pantasaph, North Wales, where he wrote the greater part +of those in his last. After this he did little work of first quality. +His own soul, rather than the world, made fateful and fatal demands of +him. This strange being, with brain of wondrous imagery and cleanest +thoughts, this gentle poetic genius, voluntarily, it would seem, +chose destitution and desolation as his lot--if one dare apply such +terms to a being whose inner life was so rich with vision. But opium +and privation are exacting mistresses and eventually they wrecked his +never-too-robust body. Unfamiliar and unkempt, this wayward child of +the magical soul, this decadent Shelley who “dabbled his fingers in +the day-fall,” preferred to haunt the Embankment, the cavernous arches +of Charing Cross and the bleak and dusty colonnades of Covent Garden, +like any lonely and friendless human outcast, until disease drove him +to take shelter in a hospital at St John’s Wood, where he died, on 13th +November 1907. + +Among the many eloquent and whole-hearted tributes to his memory, that +by Wilfred Whitten stands out for its vivid word portraiture of the man +in his latter days. Mr Whitten first met Francis Thompson at the office +of _The Academy_, Chancery Lane, in 1897, “the year in which, with +his _New Poems_, he took farewell of poetry and began,” he says, +“to look on life as so much dead lift, so much needless postscript to +his finished epistle. Thompson came frequently to the office to receive +books for review, and to bring in his ‘copy.’ Every visit meant a talk, +which was never curtailed by Thompson. This singer, who had soared to +themes too dazzling for all but the rarest minds; this poet of the +broken wing and the renounced lyre had not become moody or taciturn. At +his best he was a fluent talker, who talked straight from his knowledge +and convictions, yet never for victory. He weighed his words, and would +not hurt a controversial fly. On great subjects he was slow or silent; +on trifles he became grotesquely tedious. This dreamer seemed to be +surprised into a kind of exhilaration at finding himself in contact +with small realities. And then the fountains of memory would be broken +up, or some quaint corner of his _amour propre_ would be touched. +He would explain nine times what was clear, and talk about snuff or +indigestion or the posting of a letter until the room swam round us.” + +Following this comes a picture of the poet as he appeared in his +pilgrimage through the London streets: “A stranger figure than +Thompson’s was not to be seen in London. Gentle in looks, half-wild in +externals, his face worn by pain and the fierce reactions of laudanum, +his hair and straggling beard neglected, he had yet a distinction +and an aloofness of bearing that marked him in the crowd; and when +he opened his lips he spoke as a gentleman and a scholar. A cleaner +mind, a more naïvely courteous manner, were not to be found. It was +impossible and unnecessary to think always of the tragic side of his +life. He still had to live and work, in his fashion, and his entries +and exits became our most cheerful institution. His great brown cape, +which he would wear on the hottest days, his disastrous hat, and his +dozen neglects and makeshifts were only the insignia of our ‘Francis’ +and of the ripest literary talent on the paper. No money (and in his +later years Thompson suffered more from the possession of money than +from the lack of it) could keep him in a decent suit of clothes for +long. Yet he was never ‘seedy.’ From a newness too dazzling to last, +and seldom achieved at that, he passed at once into a picturesque +nondescript garb that was all his own and made him resemble some weird +pedlar or packman in an etching by Ostade. This impression of him was +helped by the strange object--his fish-basket, we called it--which he +wore slung round his shoulders by a strap. It had occurred to him that +such a basket would be a convenient receptacle for the books which he +took away for review, and he added this touch to an outward appearance +which already detached him from millions.” + +Stranger or more inspired being has never before slipped through the +indifferent metropolitan throng, transmuting, by his indifference to +earthly things, tragic moments into joyous conquests. + +Having mentioned the difficulties of friendly intention towards such a +man, it is necessary to quote here a more recent tribute to Thompson’s +earliest friend, Wilfrid Meynell, contributed in a letter to _The +Nation_ by Lewis Hind, in reply to a poem “To Francis Thompson,” by +William H. Davies. There were lines in this poem, such as “No window +kept a light for thee,” and “No pilot thought thee worth his pains,” +which might have led the ill-informed to imagine Thompson a friendless +and neglected genius. The contrary is made quite clear for all time: + + “Now [says Lewis Hind] it is a matter of history that there + was a man who, through sheer love of great verse, and through + kindness, piloted Francis Thompson all the years of his London + life from the late eighties until his death. That man was + Wilfrid Meynell. There was a window always alight for the + poet--the window of the Meynell home. And if this is not made + very clear in the forthcoming _Life of Francis Thompson_, + by Everard Meynell, the reason will be the family shrinking + from making their good deeds known. I speak from knowledge. + Long ago (it must have been about 1889), on the occasion of my + first meeting with Wilfrid Meynell (my initial call at that + hospitable house, drawn thither by an essay from Mrs Meynell’s + pen that made me eager to meet the author), Mr Meynell asked + me if I had ever heard of a Francis Thompson who had submitted + to him for _Merry England_ an astonishing poem from the + vague address of Charing Cross Post Office. Later, he tracked + the poet, and from that day until Thompson’s death Wilfrid + Meynell was pilot, friend, purse, anything, everything, to the + poet. From the material world Francis Thompson wanted nothing. + It did not interest him. It did not exist for him. His body, + that wretched structure ordained to house, as it best might, + his ardent spirit, he, shall I say, despised. Comfort, a home, + provision for the future were to him unrealities. His only + realities were spiritual; his only adventures were in the land + of visions. The Meynell household was his true parental home, + and he, a child in all worldly matters, was as incurious as a + child as to the whence and why of the necessaries of life. For a + time I was happily instrumental in relieving my friend, Wilfrid + Meynell, of the financial burden of piloting a poet. That was + during the days of my editorship of _The Academy_, when + for three or four years Thompson was our most valued and most + difficult contributor. I soon realised the folly of sending + him a cheque in payment of contributions. Either he would + never open the letter, or, likely enough, he would light his + obstreperous pipe with the cheque, apparently never dreaming + that it might be useful in paying his landlady. No; I sent him + no cheques after the first month. A cheque was despatched to his + landlady each week for board and lodging, and a few shillings + were placed in the poet’s hand, periodically, for pocket money, + which he accepted with detachment, his flow of conversation (it + was his wont often to talk about nothing at exasperating length) + uninterrupted. _The Academy_ would never have received his + fine ‘Ode on the Death of Cecil Rhodes’ (a commission: completed + in fifteen hours) had he not been in want that day of pocket + money--not for collars, not for cabs--for laudanum.” + +Tragedy there was in the life of Francis Thompson, but there was +nothing pitiful. It was a life too deep for pathos. He was one of those +who were marked by the quickening spirit of the times for test of +tribulation. The search for reality in the Nineties produced many such +who were impelled by the unknown forces of the moment to follow life to +the very frontier of experience. Consciously or unconsciously, as we +have seen, men were experimenting with life, and it would seem also as +if life were experimenting with men. It was a revolution precipitated +by the Time Spirit. Francis Thompson represented the revolt against +the world. He did not, as many had done, defy the world; he denied +it, and, by placing his condition beneath contempt, he conquered it. +That, at least, was the effect of his curious life, and in that he was +unique even in a period of spiritual and intellectual insurrection and +suffering. The probability that he took to poverty as he took to opium, +as a sedative for the malady of spirit, does not invalidate this view, +and the record of his pilgrimage and his faith is actually epitomised +in the most popular and most remarkable of his poems, _The Hound of +Heaven_, a work which well might serve as a symbol of the spiritual +unrest of the whole nineteenth century. But whilst every thinker and +dreamer of the _fin de siècle_ decade was seeking a fuller life +through art, or experience, or sensation, or reform, or revolt, or +possessions, Francis Thompson was finding it in the negation of all +these. Whilst others acquired for themselves treasures of one kind or +another, or sought for themselves wonders and achievements of one kind +or another, he remained both poor and unmoved by his poverty. If mind +ever was kingdom to man, Francis Thompson’s mind a kingdom was to him; +nay, it was the kingdom of God. + +In this great lyric the mystical idea of God as the Hound of Heaven +eternally pursuing the pilgrims of life until they return to Him is +autobiographical of a man and an age. What better epitome of the mind +of the modern world could be imagined than the opening stanza? + + “I fled Him, down the nights and down the days; + I fled Him down the arches of the years; + I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways + Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears + I hid from Him, and under running laughter. + Up vistaed hopes, I sped; + And shot, precipitated, + Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears, + From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.” + +There we have the whole desolation of man--the seeker who findeth not, +for what he seeks seeketh him; the hunter of God hunted by God--and +as the poem proceeds we see the eternal malady of the spirit, now +satiated, now insatiable, in the age-long quest for peace and joy in +things known and seen: + + “To all swift things for swiftness did I sue; + Clung to the whistling mane of every wind. + But whether they swept, smoothly fleet, + The long savannahs of the blue; + Or whether, Thunder-driven, + They clanged His chariot ’thwart a heaven + Plashy with flying lightnings round the spurn o’ their feet:-- + Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue.” + +Francis Thompson took a delight in simple things which recalls +Wordsworth’s attitude and sometimes that poet’s accent, particularly +in the lines called “Daisy,” wherein, after the manner, also, of the +Nineties, he celebrates his meeting with Innocence in the person of a +young girl on the Sussex hills near Storrington: + + “She looked a little wistfully, + Then went her sunshine way:-- + The sea’s eye had a mist on it, + And the leaves fell from the day. + + She went her unremembering way, + She went, and left in me + The pang of all the partings gone, + And partings yet to be. + + She left me marvelling why my soul + Was sad that she was glad; + At all the sadness in the sweet, + The sweetness in the sad.” + +Indeed, it would be easier to find resemblances between Francis +Thompson and poets so diverse as Wordsworth and Shelley than between +him and the mystic poets of the seventeenth century. He had the +quietism of Wordsworth and the exalted sensuousness of Shelley, +and he had the fundamental saintliness of both. A life of sordid +self-inflicted disaster could no more affect the strength and +cleanliness of his spirit than a life of passionate wilfulness could +touch the purity of the soul of Shelley. But there are definite points +of divergence between Thompson and the two earlier poets. He goes +further with Shelley than with Wordsworth: Thompson and Shelley were +more akin. The spirituality of Wordsworth was, ultimately, moral; +that of Shelley, mystic. Had the spirit of Wordsworth been reborn +in 1891 it might have been rationalistic and ethical: the pride of +Nonconformity. But the spirit of Shelley reborn at the same time might +have been--Francis Thompson. Shelley, it is true, sought an unknown God +in materialism, and some of his prose might easily have been inspired +by that Secular Society which post-dated him by half-a-century, but his +most rationalistic moment in song has all the passionate mysticism of +William Blake. The paganism of Shelley seems to span the years with +majestic courage until, weary of the endless show of things, it joins +forces with Thompson and Christianity. + +The modern poet knew and understood Shelley as few have done. For him +no “bright but ineffectual angel,” this soaring creature of enraptured +song, but a child with the whole universe for toy-box: “He dabbles his +fingers in the day-fall. He is gold-dusty with tumbling amidst the +stars. He makes bright mischief with the moon. The meteors nuzzle their +noses in his hand. He teases into growling the kennelled thunder, and +laughs at the shaking of its fiery chain. He dances in and out of the +gates of heaven: its floor is littered with his broken fancies. He runs +wild over the fields of ether. He chases the rolling world. He gets +between the feet of the horses of the sun. He stands in the lap of +patient Nature, and twines her loosened tresses after a hundred wilful +fashions, to see how she will look nicest in his song.” And in this +description of Shelley, Thompson goes far towards describing himself, +but he did not stand “in the lap of patient Nature”; Francis Thompson, +childlike also, rested in the lap of God. + +This kinship with Shelley in a common Pantheism is realised more than +elsewhere in Francis Thompson’s _Anthem of Earth_, a luxuriant +poem in which he retraces with depth and beauty, and an added richness, +the image he had summoned to his aid in the essay on his kin-poet: + + “Then what wild Dionysia I, young Bacchanal, + Danced in thy lap! Ah for the gravity! + Then, O Earth, thou rang’st beneath me, + Rocked to Eastward, rocked to Westward, + Even with the shifted + Poise and footing of my thought! + I brake through thy doors of sunset, + Ran before the hooves of sunrise, + Shook thy matron tresses down in fancies + Wild and wilful + As a poet’s hand could twine them; + Caught in my fantasy’s crystal chalice + The Bow, as its cataract of colours + Plashed to thee downward; + Then when thy circuit swung to nightward, + Night the abhorrèd, night was a new dawning, + Celestial dawning + Over the ultimate marges of the soul; + Dusk grew turbulent with fire before me, + And like a windy arras waved with dreams. + Sleep I took not for my bedfellow, + Who could waken + To a revel, an inexhaustible + Wassail of orgiac imageries; + Then while I wore thy sore insignia + In a little joy, O Earth, in a little joy; + Loving thy beauty in all creatures born of thee, + Children, and the sweet-essenced body of women; + Feeling not yet upon my neck thy foot, + But breathing warm of thee as infants breathe + New from their mother’s morning bosom.” + +Such earth-love is Pagan rather than Christian, yet it was not foreign +to the Christianity of Francis Thompson, whose orthodoxy did not +curtail his worship of Life in many of her manifestations--in the stars +and the winds, in the flowers and children, and in pure womanhood. +There was hardly anything abnormal about his taste, but everything +he worshipped became distinguished and strange by the wonder-maiden +imagery of his genius. The foregoing lines are richly diapered with +luxurious phrases. No other poet of his time possessed such jewelled +endowment, and few of any other time equal him in this gift. Nowhere in +English song are there poems so heavily freighted with decoration of +such magnificence; and no poems approaching, however remotely, their +regal splendour have the power of suggesting such absolute simplicity. +Sometimes his “wassail of orgiac imageries” becomes the light conceit +of his time, but never for long. Francis Thompson soared high above +literary flightiness. His very luxuriance of expression was austere; it +was not the young delight of a Keats in sheer physical beauty; it was +the transmutation of sense into spirit by the refinement of sense in +vision. + + + + + CHAPTER XIII + + JOHN DAVIDSON + + +The Eighteen Nineties had no more remarkable mind and no more +distinctive poet than John Davidson. From the beginning he was both an +expression of and a protest against the decadent movement, and in his +personality as well as in his tragic end he represented the struggle +and defeat of his day in the cause of a bigger sense of life and a +greater power over personality and destiny. At the dawn of the period +he had reached middle age, having been born at Barrhead, Renfrewshire, +on 11th April 1857. But curiously enough, as in the case of so many of +those who gained distinction in art during the period, John Davidson +did not show any distinctive _fin de siècle_ characteristics until he +produced his novel, _Perfervid_, in 1890; and between that time and +1899 he remained an artist in the approved Whistlerian sense, content +in the main to express life in the traditional artistic manner, without +any overweening desire to preach a particular doctrine. With the close +of the decade his mental attitude seems to have undergone a revolution, +which translated him from an artist pure and simple into a philosophic +missioner using literature as a means of propaganda. + +He was the son of Alexander Davidson, a minister of the Evangelical +Union, and Helen, daughter of Alexander Crockett of Elgin. His +education began at the Highlanders’ Academy, Greenock, and continued +until he was thirteen years of age, when he was sent to work in the +chemical laboratory of a sugar manufacturer at Greenock, and in the +following year he became an assistant to the town analyst. In 1872 he +returned to the Highlanders’ Academy as a pupil teacher, and remained +there for four years, afterwards spending a year at Edinburgh +University. In 1877 he became a tutor at Alexander’s Charity, Glasgow, +and during the next six years he held similar scholastic posts at +Perth and Paisley. During 1884–1885 he was a clerk in a Glasgow thread +firm, but returned to the scholastic profession in the latter year, +teaching in Morrison’s Academy, Crieff, and in a private school at +Greenock. During these years he devoted much time to literary work, +the drama claiming a considerable amount of his attention, and in 1886 +his first work, _Bruce: A Drama_, was published in Glasgow. In 1888 he +published _Smith, a Tragic Farce_; in 1889 _An Unhistorical Pastoral_, +_A Romantic Farce_ and _Scaramouch in Naxos_. All of these were issued +in Scotland during his period of scholastic employment, but this he +abandoned in the year 1889, when he departed for London with the object +of earning his living as a writer. + +Then began a period of literary struggle mitigated somewhat by the +rewards of artistic recognition. In the midst of much journalistic +work, which included contributions to _The Glasgow Herald_, _The +Speaker_ and _The Yellow Book_, he produced poems and novels and short +stories; he also translated François Coppée’s play, _Pour la Couronne_, +which was produced by Forbes Robertson at the Lyceum Theatre under the +title of _For the Crown_, and Victor Hugo’s _Ruy Blas_, produced at the +Imperial Theatre as _A Queen’s Romance_. + +It was his poetry which first won for him a place among his +contemporaries. _In a Music Hall and Other Poems_ was published in +1891, and during the decade he issued at short intervals eight further +volumes of poetry, followed by two others in the new century. These +volumes were _Fleet Street Eclogues_ (1893), _Ballads and Songs_ +(1894), _Fleet Street Eclogues_, second series (1896), _New Ballads_ +(1897), _The Last Ballad_ (1899), _Holiday and Other Poems_ (1906), and +_Fleet Street and Other Poems_ (1909). In this body of work Davidson +is represented at his highest as an artist, though he himself set more +store by the remarkable series of “testaments” and philosophical plays +and poems which engaged his genius during his last phase. In the period +covered by his poetic activity he published various prose works, such +as _Sentences and Paragraphs_ (1893), an early volume revealing the +scientific and philosophical interests of his mind, and above all his +early appreciation of the teaching of Friedrich Nietzsche; _A Random +Itinerary_ (1894), and several novels, including _Baptist Lake_ (1894) +and _The Wonderful Mission of Earl Lavender_ (1895), published with +Beardsley’s frontispiece illustrating one of the incidents of the book. + +The books of his last phase are a designed attempt to co-ordinate and +restate his ideas upon life and art. They begin with the first three +of his four “testaments”: _The Testament of a Vivisector_ (1901), _The +Testament of a Man Forbid_ (1901), and _The Testament of an Empire +Builder_ (1902). He brooded long and deeply over the views expressed +in these works, which reveal a revolutionism transcending all familiar +attacks upon institutions, secular or religious, for the poet lashes +with high and passionate seriousness the tyrannies not of man, but +those also of nature and of fate. Next in order of these philosophical +works came _The Theatrocrat: A Tragic Play of Church and State_ +(1905). Later he devised a dramatic trilogy, further to embody his +philosophical gospel, under the title “God and Mammon”; but only two of +the projected plays were written: _The Triumph of Mammon_ (1907), and +_Mammon and his Message_ (1908). Finally, he concluded his message to +humanity fittingly enough with _The Testament of John Davidson_ (1908). +His attitude towards these works is made clear in his prefaces and +other notes, and in the dedication to the last volume he describes the +books as “The Prologue to a Literature that is to be,” a literature, he +adds, “already begun in my Testaments and Tragedies.” + +Depression rather than disappointment dogged the life of John Davidson. +It is true that he did not reach fortune by his works, but even he +could hardly have expected such a reward. He did, however, and with +justice in the light of so much industry, expect to earn a living by +his pen, but this expectation had but meagre fulfilment. As in the +case of many other artists he had to pot-boil. This hurt him both +in performance and result, for regular income did not spring out of +the sacrifice. “Nine-tenths of my time,” he wrote, on his fiftieth +birthday, “and that which is more precious, have been wasted in the +endeavour to earn a livelihood. In a world of my own making I should +have been writing only what should have been written.” These words +were written in 1907, and the year before he had been awarded a Civil +List pension of one hundred pounds, but this came too late, however, +to arouse hope in a temperament which long years of struggle with +adversity had steeped in a settled gloom. In 1908 the poet left London +with his family for Penzance, and on 23rd March 1909 he left his home +never to return. Nearly six months afterwards his body was discovered +by some fishermen in Mount’s Bay, and, in accordance with his known +wishes, was buried at sea. Such a death is not a surprising end to one +who adopted or possessed Davidson’s attitude towards life. He resented +the unknown and loathed all forms of weakness. He could not accept +life as he found it, and his philosophy reflects his objection to +circumstance and fate, actuality and condition, in a passionate claim +for control over destiny and power, and over life itself. There was no +reality for him without omnipotence; he repudiated life on any other +terms. That was at the root of his depression, as it was the basis of +his philosophy. + +The assumption that he took his own life is consistent with what is +known of his temperament and his ideas. In _The Testament of John +Davidson_, published the year before his death, he anticipates this +fate: + + “None should outlive his power.... Who kills + Himself subdues the conqueror of kings: + Exempt from death is he who takes his life: + My time has come.” + +And further on in the same poem he gives suicide a philosophic basis +which has, perhaps, more frankness than novelty: + + “By my own will alone + The ethereal substance, which I am, attained, + And now by my own sovereign will, forgoes, + Self-consciousness; and thus are men supreme: + No other living thing can choose to die. + This franchise and this high prerogative + I show the world:--Men are the Universe + Aware at last, and must not live in fear, + Slaves of the seasons, padded, bolstered up, + Clystered and drenched and dieted and drugged; + Or hateful victims of senility, + Toothless and like an infant checked and schooled; + Or in the dungeon of a sick room drained + By some tabescent horror in their prime; + But when the tide of life begins to turn, + Before the treason of the ebbing wave + Divulges refuse and the barren shore, + Upon the very period of the flood, + Stand out to sea and bend our weathered sail, + Against the sunset, valiantly resolved + To win the heaven of eternal night.” + +The poetry of John Davidson reveals on most pages a keen sense of +life in its various manifestations struggling for power of one kind +or another. His imagination is essentially dramatic, but his sense +of conflict is often philosophic, his artistic sense always showing +a tendency to give way to the imp of reflection which, through +his imagination, was ever seeking to turn drama into philosophy +and philosophy into science. Yet he was not immune from a certain +whimsicality, particularly in his early prose works, in the fantastic +novels, _Perfervid_, _Earl Lavender_, and _Baptist Lake_, and still +more certainly, with a surer touch of genius, in his pantomime +_Scaramouch in Naxos_. In the “Prologue” to this play, spoken by +Silenus, Davidson goes far towards summing up his own peculiar +attitude. The speaker alludes to a fondness for pantomimes, and +proceeds to say: “I don’t know whether I like this one so well as those +which I witnessed when I was a boy. It is too pretentious, I think; +too anxious to be more than a Pantomime--this play in which I am about +to perform. True _Pantomime_ is a good-natured nightmare. Our sense of +humour is titillated and strummed, and kicked and oiled, and fustigated +and stroked, and exalted and bedevilled, and, on the whole, severely +handled by this self-same harmless incubus; and our intellects are +scoffed at. The audience, in fact, is, intellectually, a pantaloon, on +whom the Harlequin-pantomime has no mercy. It is frivolity whipping +its schoolmaster, common-sense; the drama on its apex; art, unsexed, +and without a conscience; the reflection of the world in a green, +knotted glass. Now, I talked to the author and showed him that there +was a certain absence from his work of this kind of thing; but he put +his thumbs in his arm-pits, and replied with some disdain, ‘Which of +the various dramatic forms of the time may one conceive as likeliest +to shoot up in the fabulous manner of the beanstalk, bearing on its +branches things of earth and heaven undreamt of in philosophy? The +sensational dramas? Perhaps from them some new development of tragic +art; but Pantomime seems to be of best hope. It contains in crude +forms, humour, poetry, and romance. It is childhood of a new poetical +comedy.’ Then I saw where he was and said, ‘God be with you,’ and +washed my hands of him.” Here we have Davidson, as early as 1888, +concerned about something new in art, something elastic enough to +contain a big expression of modernity, of that modernity which in the +Eighteen Nineties, and in John Davidson more than in any other British +writer of the time, was more than half reminiscent of the classical +Greek idea of eternal conflict. + +But with Davidson and the moderns, led philosophically by Nietzsche, +Davidson’s earliest master, the eternal conflict was not regarded +with Greek resignation. It was looked upon as a thing which might be +directed by the will of man. The modern idea was to make conflict a +means of growth towards power: the stone upon which man might sharpen +the metal of his will until he could literally storm high heaven by his +own might. Such an idea, often vague and chaotic enough, inspired the +hour, making philosophers of artists and artists of philosophers, and +seekers after a new elixir of life of all who were sufficiently alive +to be modern. This idea, more than any other, informed the moods of the +moment with restless curiosity and revolt. It filled the optimist with +the conviction that he lived in a glorious period of transition which +might at any moment end in Utopia, and the pessimist with the equally +romantic notion that the times were so much out of joint that nothing +short of their evacuation for the past or the future would avail. As +Davidson sang: + + “The Present is a dungeon dark + Of social problems. Break the gaol! + Get out into the splendid Past + Or bid the splendid Future hail.” + +This resentment of the present was always Davidson’s weakness despite +an intellectual courage in which he had few equals in his time. + +He could face with heroic fortitude the necessity of revaluing ideas, +just as he could face the necessity of revaluing his own life by +suicide. But he could not face the slings and arrows of outrageous +fortune. He never realised that a man and his age were identical, +or that tragedy was an essential of life to be courted even by the +powerful. (“Deep tragedy,” said Napoleon, “is the school of great +men.”) Instead of that he murmured against that which thwarted and +checked him, regretting the absence of might to mould the world for +his own convenience. That was his contribution to the decadence. The +bigness of him, unknown to himself, was the fact that he did fight for +the integrity of his own personality and ideas, and he did accomplish +their conservation, even to rounding off his own life-work with a final +“testament.” But when one has said all one is forced to admit that the +irregularities and incongruities of his genius were nothing less than +the expression and mark of his time. + +It is as a poet that Davidson must ultimately stand or fall, although +the philosophy he expressed in his later volumes will doubtless attract +far more attention than that which greeted its inception. At first +glance his poetry suggests a limited outlook, and even a limited +technique; but on closer acquaintance this view cannot be maintained. +John Davidson is as varied as he is excellent, and as charming in +moments of light-heartedness as he is noble in his tragic moods. Time +probably will favour his ballads, but it will by no means neglect the +magic poetry of his eclogues, nor the grandeur of certain passages +in his poetic dramas. And it is not easy to believe that the delicate +lyricism of some of his shorter poems will ever pass out of the favour +of those who love great verse. Such a poem is “In Romney Marsh,” finely +balanced in phrase and image, and rising to a magnificent climax of +metaphorical description in the two last verses: + + “Night sank: like flakes of silver fire + The stars in one great shower came down; + Shrill blew the wind; and shrill the wire + Rang out from Hythe to Romney town. + + The darkly shining salt sea drops + Streamed as the waves clashed on the shore; + The beach, with all its organ stops + Pealing again, prolonged the roar.” + +Even in his last volume of verse, when ideas rather than imaginative +inventions crowded his mind, he proved in many a poem the invincibility +of his lyrical gift. The title-poem itself, “Holiday,” equals any +of his earlier lyrics, and compares well with even the best of his +ballads. And he has wrought a solemn grandeur into the short crisp +lines of the impassioned and deeply felt poem called “The Last Song”: + + “Death is but a trance: + Life, but now begun! + Welcome change and chance: + Though my days are done, + Let the planets dance + Lightly round the sun! + Morn and evening clasp + Earth with loving hands-- + In a ruddy grasp + All the pleasant lands! + + Now I hear the deep + Bourdon of the bee, + Like a sound asleep + Wandering o’er the lea; + While the song-birds keep + Urging nature’s plea. + Hark! The violets pray + Swooning in the sun! + Hush! the roses say + Love and death are one!” + +It does not need a very wide acquaintance with Davidson’s poetry +to realise how he was affected by the natural life of his native +countryside and the country places of his residence. He saw the +phenomena of field and hedgerow and woodland with clear eye and +appreciative exactitude. But he did not immolate his personality at +the shrine of Nature after the manner of Wordsworth or Shelley. His +appreciation was in the main sensuous and æsthetic, serving to supply +the poet with some of the fanciful materials of his art, for use in the +more buoyant moments of his muse. + +Throughout the whole of his poems passages abound in which Nature +has thus been made to render the sort of tribute Keats demanded of +her, as for instance in the following passage from one of the earlier +eclogues:-- + + “At early dawn through London you must go + Until you come where long black hedgerows grow, + With pink buds pearled, with here and there a tree, + And gates and stiles; and watch good country folk; + And scent the spicy smoke + Of withered weeds that burn where gardens be; + And in a ditch perhaps a primrose see. + The rooks shall stalk the plough, larks mount the skies, + Blackbirds and speckled thrushes sing aloud, + Hid in the warm white cloud + Mantling the thorn, and far away shall rise + The milky low of cows and farmyard cries. + From windy heavens the climbing sun shall shine, + And February greet you like a maid + In russet-cloak arrayed; + And you shall take her for your mistress fine, + And pluck a crocus for her valentine.” + +This keen sense of country sights and sounds reaches its highest in “A +Runnable Stag,” a lyric which stands alone among English poems for its +musical realism and its vividly suggested but unstated sentiment: + + “When the pods went pop on the broom, green broom, + And apples began to be golden-skinned, + We harboured a stag in the Priory comb, + And we feathered his trail up-wind, up-wind, + We feathered his trail up-wind-- + A stag of warrant, a stag, a stag, + A runnable stag, a kingly crop, + Brow, bay and tray and three on top, + A stag, a runnable stag.” + +The subject brings to mind the callous stag-hunting chapter in Richard +Jefferies’ book, _Red Deer_, but different are the sentiments +underlying poem and essay--in the former human feeling colours realism +with pity at the stag harried to death in the sea, when + + “Three hundred gentlemen, able to ride, + Three hundred horses as gallant and free, + Beheld him escape on the evening tide, + Far out till he sank in the Severn Sea, + Till he sank in the depths of the sea-- + The stag, the buoyant stag, the stag + That slept at last in a jewelled bed + Under the sheltering oceans spread, + The stag, the runnable stag.” + +Davidson without comment reveals the pity of it all, but Richard +Jefferies is capable of describing a similar incident in the +passionless terms of photography. + +Sympathy with pain, oftener of the spirit than of the flesh, links John +Davidson with the Humanist movement of his time and ours, but it does +not imprison him in a specific category. Labels cannot be attached to +him. He was not associated with any coterie or organisation. He was as +strange to the Rhymers’ Club as he was to the Fabian Society or the +Humanitarian League, and although circumstances brought him into the +Bodley Head group of writers, giving some of his books decorations by +Beardsley, and his portrait, by Will Rothenstein, to _The Yellow +Book_, the facts must be set down to Mr John Lane’s sense of what +was new and strong in literature rather than to any feeling of kinship +on Davidson’s part. Kinsman of modernity in the big sense, he was not, +then, in the brotherhood of any clique or special group of modernists, +and although his works were as modern in the smaller topical aspect as +they are part of a larger and more notable awakening of thought and +imagination, they never achieved even a small measure of the popularity +usually accorded topical writings. Davidson’s work, even in what may be +considered its most popular form, in his great ballads, was esteemed +by a few rather than accepted by many. It is conceivable that in due +time “The Ballad of a Nun,” “The Ballad of an Artist’s Wife” and “The +Ballad of Hell” will enter into the familiar poetry of the nation, as +they have taken their places in the realm of good poetry recognised by +the cultured. But that time is not yet; a higher average of culture +must come about before such verses could supplant “Christmas Day in the +Workhouse,” or even Rudyard Kipling’s ballad of “The Mary Glocester” or +“Gunga Din.” + +Davidson himself eventually rejected in some measure his own lyric +verse. He came to look upon rhyme as a symptom of decadence, although +he knew that “decadence in any art is always the manure and root of +a higher manifestation of that art.” He sought therefore to discover +in the art of poetry, as he sought also in life, a newer and more apt +means of expression. This he found in English blank verse. And he +associated his discovery with the final profundity of his passionately +asserted vision of life as matter seeking ever finer and more effective +manifestations. “Matter says its will in poetry; above all, in English +blank verse, and often, as in the case of Milton, entirely against the +conscious intention of the poet.” In this verse form, “the subtlest, +most powerful, and most various organ of utterance articulate faculty +has produced,” he saw the latest emanation of what he calls the +“concrete mystery Matter,” created, “like folk, or flowers, or cholera, +or war, or lightning, or light,” by an evolutionary process involving +all activities and states of consciousness, until it produced that +powerful human race which “poured into England instinctively as into +the womb of the future, and having fought there together for centuries +... wrestling together for the mastery, and producing in the struggle +the blended breed of men we know: so tried and welded, so tempered +and damascened, this English race having thrown off the fetters of a +worn-out creed, having obtained the kingdom of the sea and begun to lay +hands as by right on the new world, burst out into blank verse without +premeditation, and earth thrilled to its centre with delight that +Matter had found a voice at last.” Poetry for him was thus no scholarly +accomplishment, no mere decoration or bauble, but the very instrument +of thought and imagination, emotion and passion, the finely tempered +weapon of a nationalism which he linked up with Nature and endowed with +her fierceness, mastery and power. + +His sense of the high mission of poetry found ample expression in the +prefaces and appendices of his later books, and in his “testaments.” +But in earlier days he heard himself speaking of the meaning and object +of his own poetry in “A Ballad of Heaven,” where the musician announces +the completion of the masterpiece which “signed the sentence of the +sun” and crowned “the great eternal age”: + + “The slow adagio begins; + The winding-sheets are ravelled out + That swathe the minds of men, the sins + That wrap their rotting souls about. + + The dead are heralded along; + With silver trumps and golden drums, + And flutes and oboes, keen and strong. + My brave andante singing comes. + + Then like a python’s sumptuous dress + The frame of things is cast away, + And out of Time’s obscure distress, + The thundering scherzo crashes Day.” + +Davidson’s self-imposed mission was to thunder news of a new dawn. +He repudiated the past (“The insane past of mankind is the incubus,” +he said), and, whilst insisting upon the importance of the present, +he heralded the new day to come with an ardour equalled only by the +Futurists of Milan, who followed him, and are his nearest intellectual +kin. Had John Davidson lived to-day he must have hailed Marinetti +brother. “Undo the past!” he cried, in _The Testament of a Man +Forbid_: + + “Undo the past! + The rainbow reaches Asgard now no more; + Olympus stands untenanted; the dead + Have their serene abode in earth itself, + Our womb, our nurture and our sepulchre. + Expel the sweet imaginings, profound + Humanities and golden legends, forms + Heroic, beauties, tripping shades, embalmed + Through hallowed ages in the fragrant hearts + And generous blood of men; the climbing thoughts + Whose roots ethereal grope among the stars, + Whose passion-flowers perfume eternity, + Weed out and tear, scatter and tread them down; + Dismantle and dilapidate high heaven.” + +Being a poet, and Davidson never made any other claim, he would use +poetry to help undo the past. “The statement of the present and the +creation of the future,” he said, “are the very body and soul of +poetry.” Of his later intentions he declared, “I begin definitely in my +Testaments and Tragedies to destroy this unfit world and make it over +again in my own image.” He was never weary of asserting the novelty of +his aim and method, and although he admitted that there was no language +for what he had to say, he was convinced that what he had said was +both new in form and idea. “It is a new poetry I bring, a new poetry +for the first time in a thousand years.” He called this new poetry +“an abiding-place for man as matter-of-fact,” and his own purpose in +writing it, “to say that which is, to speak for the universe.” And the +ultimate aim of such work was, again in his own words, “to change the +mood of the world.” + +Nor was he less precise, nor less frank, in stating the new mood he +would establish in the place of the old. In the _fin de siècle_ +search for reality few possessed his diligence, fewer his intellectual +courage. The terrible and powerful poem, “A Woman and Her Son,” +recalls something of his own unrelenting criticism of life; his own +determination at all costs to face facts and re-value ideas: + + “These are times + When all must to the crucible--no thought, + Practice, or use, or custom sacro-sanct + But shall be violable now.” + +Early association with the ideas of Nietzsche had directed Davidson’s +innate pessimism into channels of creative inquisitiveness and +speculation. He learnt more from Nietzsche than did any other poet +of his time, but he never became a disciple. He learnt of that +philosophical courage which Nietzsche called “hardness,” and used it +Nietzsche-wise in his continual questioning and revaluing of accepted +ideas. He was imbued also with the German philosopher’s reverence +for power. But he did not accept the Superman doctrine. This he +repudiated equally with the Darwinian idea of sexual selection; both +stood condemned by him because of their anthropomorphism--what in fact +Nietzsche condemned in other directions as being “human-all-too-human.” +Against the idea of evolution by sexual selection, with the ultimates +man and then superman, he set the idea of chemical selection, +with the ultimate object of complete self-consciousness. Beyond +self-consciousness he saw nothing; that in his view was the highest +possible achievement of life. The essence of his teaching is based +in the idea of Matter as the final manifestation of ether seeking, +first, consciousness, which it has long since attained, and next, +self-consciousness, which it has attained more recently in man. This +last form of consciousness, according to Davidson, is capable of the +highest ecstasy and all knowledge. He denies the inconceivability of +eternity, the existence at any time of chaos, and the presence at any +time of spirit. All is Matter, even the ether and the lightning are +forms of Matter. And on this basis he works out a conception of sin +as courage, heaven and hell as “memories of processes of evolution +struggling into consciousness,” and God as ether, from which man came +and to which he will return. + +In announcing this theory of the universe he does not ask for +scientific judgment or acceptance. He bases his claim for recognition +on imaginative grounds and on the fact that he is a poet. “The world,” +he wrote, “is in danger of a new fanaticism, of a scientific instead +of a religious tyranny. This is my protest. In the course of many ages +the mind of man may be able to grasp the world scientifically: in the +meantime we can know it only poetically; science is still a valley +of dead bones till imagination breathes upon it.” It was his desire +as a poet to fill the conceptions of science, the world of atoms and +electrons, of gases and electricity, of ether and matter, with the +light of imagination, as a substitute for the dead rationalism of +middle nineteenth-century culture. “Art knows very well that the world +comes to an end when it is purged of Imagination. Rationalism was only +a stage in the process. For the old conception of a created Universe, +with the fall of man, an atonement, and a heaven and hell, the form +and substance of the imagination of Christendom, Rationalism had no +substitute. Science was not ready, but how can poetry wait? Science +is synonymous with patience; poetry is impatience incarnate. If you +take away the symbol of the Universe in which, since the Christian +era began, poetry and all great art lived and had their being, I, for +one, decline to continue the eviscerated Life-in-Death of Rationalism. +I devour, digest, and assimilate the Universe; make for myself in my +Testaments and Tragedies a new form and substance of Imagination; and +by poetic power certify the semi-certitudes of science.” + +In the Eighteen Nineties John Davidson strove always for the utterance +of such feelings and ideas as absorbed his mind during his last years; +but in the earlier period he was less conscious of definite aim, and +his best work took the form of poetry and the place of great poetry. +His ballads and eclogues, a few of his lyrics and passages in his +poetic tragedies are already graven on the scroll of immortal verse. +His “testaments” belonged to another realm as they belong also to +another period. They lack the old fine flavour of the poetry of his +less purposeful days, and they hardly fulfil his own promise of a +new poetry. They are in the main arrested poetry. The strife of the +poet for a new expression, a new poetic value, is too evident, and +you lay these later works down baffled and unconvinced, but reverent +before the courage and honesty of a mind valiantly beating itself +to destruction against the locked and barred door of an unknown and +perhaps non-existent reality. + + + + + CHAPTER XIV + + ENTER--G.B.S. + + +Most of the distinguished personalities of the Eighteen Nineties +challenged somebody or something. George Bernard Shaw challenged +everybody and everything. He began the period as one entering the +lists, and he has tilted more or less successfully ever since. +No other man of the time broke so many lances as he, and looking +backwards one is filled with amazement at his prodigality of ideas +and wit, his persistent audacity and unfailing cheerfulness. Yet +these very qualities limited his effectiveness, for it took even “the +intellectuals,” whose high priest he became, twenty years to realise +that he was in earnest and a genius. G.B.S. was Challenge incarnate--a +rampant note of interrogation, eternally asking us uncomfortable +questions about our most cherished habits. Why, for instance, we +ate meat? Why we vivisected animals? Why we owned property? Why we +tolerated such a brainless drama--such unimaginative art--such low +wages--such long hours of labour--such inconvenient houses--such +adulteration--such dirty cities--such illogical morals--such dead +religions--in short, such a chaotic civilisation? And he did not wait +for us to answer his innumerable questions; he answered them himself, +or provoking a defence by a process of irritation, he smashed our +replies with the nicest of dialectical art; tempting us in the pauses +of our bewilderment with a new vision of life. + +In the year 1890 Bernard Shaw was hardly a name to those who were +outside of convinced Socialist and revolutionary circles, although his +articles on music, over the pseudonym _Corno di Bassetto_, in +_The Star_ (1888–1890), afterwards continued in _The World_ +from 1890–1894, made him the subject of discussion in musical circles. +Socialists knew him as a tireless and effective propagandist of the +collectivism upheld by the Fabian Society, of which organisation he +was one of the most able members, and as the editor of the famous +_Fabian Essays in Socialism_ (1889), which contained two essays by +himself, one of which had been delivered before the Economic Section +at the Bath Meeting of the British Association, in the preceding year. +He was also known in the inner circles of Socialism as a persistent +enemy of the Marxian theory of value, which he attacked on every +possible occasion. He was introduced to a wider public as a result of +the first production of Ibsen’s plays in London. _Rosmersholm_, +_Ghosts_ and _Hedda Gabler_ had been performed by the Stage +Society, and the astonishment of the dramatic critics had expressed +hopeless bewilderment and surprise in a venomous Press attack. The year +before Shaw had lectured upon Henrik Ibsen before the Fabian Society at +the St James’ Restaurant, and this lecture, rewritten in the form of a +reply to the critics, was produced as a book in 1891, under the title +of _The Quintessence of Ibsenism_. And in 1892 he followed up +this defence of the modern drama with a play of his own, _Widowers’ +Houses_, which was produced by Mr J. T. Grein at the Royalty Theatre +and published in book form during the same year. + +Between 1879 and 1883 Bernard Shaw began his literary career by writing +five novels. The results were not encouraging from the publishing +side, four only, after many vicissitudes, achieving print, and one +only, _Cashel Byron’s Profession_, receiving anything approaching +recognition from Press or public. So, checked but undismayed, he +turned, like more than one unsuccessful novelist, to the sister art of +drama. The rest of the decade was devoted to laying the foundation of +that reputation which has placed him in the forefront of the modern +dramatic movement. Between 1892 and 1896 he wrote, besides _Widowers’ +Houses_:--_The Philanderer: A Topical Comedy_; _Mrs Warren’s +Profession: A Play_; _Arms and the Man: A Comedy_; _Candida: +A Mystery_; _The Man of Destiny: A Trifle_; and _You Never +Can Tell: A Comedy_. These were afterwards collected and published +in 1898 in two volumes called _Plays: Pleasant and Unpleasant_, +prefaced by one of those essays which are his favourite medium for the +interpretation of himself and his ideas to a shy-witted public. Three +other plays, _The Devil’s Disciple_, _Cæsar and Cleopatra_, +and _Captain Brassbound’s Conversion_, followed, and were +published, in the volume called _Three Plays for Puritans_, in +1901. Public performances of most of the plays were given, but it was +not until the dawn of the new century and the historic Vedrenne-Barker +repertoire season at the Court Theatre (1904–1907) that the general +playgoing public was convinced of even the entertainment value of these +remarkable dramas. But lack of public appreciation sat lightly on the +shoulders of Bernard Shaw. Seemingly possessed of exhaustless energy, +and quite indifferent to neglect, he went on with his work, putting +his ideas and arguments into such essays as the _Impossibilities of +Anarchism_ (1893); _The Perfect Wagnerite_ (1898); _Fabianism +and the Empire_ (1900); and into the long series of dramatic +criticisms contributed to _The Saturday Review_ between 1895 and +1898. Whenever occasion offered he carried his warfare into current +polemics by means of letters to the Press, and one of these, attacking +Max Nordau’s _Degeneration_, published in the American Anarchist +paper _Liberty_ (27th July 1895), probably forms a record of its +kind, for it fills practically the whole of that issue of the paper, +and has since been published in a volume entitled _The Sanity of +Art_. He also associated himself with the more typical literary +movement of the period by contributing an essay “On Going to Church” to +_The Savoy_. + +In all this work Bernard Shaw assumed the rôle of critic. The newly +awakened social conscience found in him a willing and effective +instrument, and despite his unabashed and often self-announced +cleverness, the intellectual vice of the time, mere “brilliance,” +critical or otherwise, was rarely for him an end in itself, as was +the wit of Oscar Wilde and Max Beerbohm. His cleverness subserved +a creative end, an end which looked forward towards a new and +resplendent civilisation. It was the sharp edge of the sword of +purpose. He did not scruple to enlist the forces of art in his service, +and his plays, therefore, are invariably didactic, though relieved +from dullness by abundant wit, much humour and vivid flashes of +characterisation. Such plays, for instance, as _Widowers’ Houses_ +and _Mrs Warren’s Profession_ are pure sociology in the form +of drama, or rather melodrama, for Shaw is the melodramatist of the +intellect. He seeks to do for the head what Charles Reade sought to +do for the heart, and there is no fundamental difference between the +inspiration at the back of _Widowers’ Houses_ and _It’s Never +Too Late to Mend_: both are dramatised tracts. + +Art for art’s sake had come to its logical conclusion in decadence, and +Bernard Shaw joined issue with the ascendant spirit of the times, whose +more recent devotees have adopted the expressive phrase: art for life’s +sake. It is probable that the decadents meant much the same thing, but +they saw life as intensive and individual, whereas the later view is +universal in scope. It roams extensively over humanity, realising the +collective soul. The decadent art idea stood for individuals, and saw +humanity only as a panoramic background. The ascendant view promotes +the background to a front place; it sees life communally and sees it +whole, and refuses to allow individual encroachments. Bernard Shaw +upheld this vision of life, and strove to square it with his own inborn +and emphatic individuality. He considered it legitimate to use art to +establish and extend his ideas. “Fine art,” he said, “is the subtlest, +the most seductive, the most effective means of moral propagandism in +the world, excepting only the example of personal conduct; and I waive +even this exception in favour of the art of the stage, because it works +by exhibiting examples of personal conduct made intelligible and moving +to crowds of unobservant, unreflecting people to whom real life means +nothing.” In the epistolary essay to _Liberty_ he emphasised and +detailed his sense of the moral value of art, revealing his divergence +from the Ruskin-Morris view of art as joyful work, as well as from the +views of Gautier and Baudelaire: + +“The claim of art to our respect must stand or fall with the validity +of its pretension to cultivate and refine our senses and faculties +until seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling and tasting become highly +conscious and critical acts with us, protesting vehemently against +ugliness, noise, discordant speech, frowsy clothing and foul air, +and taking keen interest and pleasure in beauty, in music, and in +the open air, besides making us insist, as necessary for comfort and +decency, on clean, wholesome, handsome fabrics to wear, and utensils of +fine material and elegant workmanship to handle. Further, art should +refine our sense of character and conduct, of justice and sympathy, +greatly heightening our self-knowledge, self-control, precision of +action, and considerateness, and making us intolerant of baseness, +cruelty, injustice and intellectual superficiality or vulgarity. The +worthy artist or craftsman is he who responds to this cultivation +of the physical or moral senses by feeding them with pictures, +musical compositions, pleasant houses and gardens, good clothes and +fine implements, poems, fictions, essays and dramas, which call the +heightened senses and ennobled faculties into pleasurable activity. +The greatest artist is he who goes a step beyond the demand, and, by +supplying works of a higher beauty and a higher interest than have yet +been perceived, succeeds, after a brief struggle with its strangeness, +in adding this fresh extension of sense to the heritage of the race. +This is why we value art: this is why we feel that the iconoclast and +the Puritan are attacking something made holier, by solid usefulness, +than their own theories of purity; this is why art has won the +privileges of religion; so that London shopkeepers who would fiercely +resent a compulsory church rate, who do not know ‘Yankee Doodle’ from +‘God save the Queen,’ and who are more interested in the photograph of +the latest celebrity than in the Velasquez portraits in the National +Gallery, tamely allow the London County Council to spend their money +on bands, on municipal art inspectors, and on plaster casts from the +antique.” + +Bernard Shaw strove to add to the heritage of the race a keener sense +of reality. He called it “the sense of fact.” And it was in pursuit +of this idea that he defended the art of the French Impressionists +and Richard Wagner and Henrik Ibsen. Much of his humour is based +on the portrayal of the incongruity between those who see things +clearly and those who don’t; between the faculty of seeing life and +experiencing life with frank individual conviction, and the habit of +seeing and living by the proxies of convention and tradition. His wit +is designedly explosive, but only apparently impudent and irreverent, +for it seeks to startle a moribund society out of its stultifying +habits, duties and ideals. In _The Quintessence of Ibsenism_ he +upholds realism against idealism, with the plays of Ibsen as text. But +his sense of reality does not take reason for its basis. The basis +of the new realism is the will. Reason takes the subsidiary place of +defender of the will, and will and faith are treated as one. Reason +does not indicate direction to the will, it proves that wilfulness is +right--after the act. Shaw says, in effect, do what you want to do and +then prove you are right. It will thus be seen that anything in the +nature of an ideal, a formal duty or a fixed habit must necessarily +conflict with the realist attitude. “The realist ... loses patience +with ideals altogether, and sees in them only something to blind us, +something to numb us, something whereby instead of resisting death, we +can disarm it by committing suicide.” He associates his attack upon +ideals with the idea of stripping the mask from the face of reality +which is life. + +Rationalism found a convinced and subtle enemy in this new master of +dialectics, for those whose minds could survive the laughter provoked +by the humorous presentation of the Shavian doctrine realised quickly +enough, and, if they were rationalists, tragically enough, that the +moral and religious system rationalism had expended so much energy +in attacking was really rationalism triumphant. Shaw announced that +civilisation was rational but wrong. Yet in the Eighteen Nineties he +had no place for mysticism in his view of life. The rationalists came +to grief by reasoning about something, and Shaw did not think it +possible to improve matters by becoming a mystic and “reasoning about +nothing.” Since then he has modified his view, but now as then his +sole aim has been the conquest of reality. This is brought out nowhere +so clearly as in the “Interlude” in _Man and Superman_, and in +one passage, that in which Don Juan explains his ideas of heaven and +hell, we have the quintessence of Shavianism. “Do you suppose heaven +is like earth?” Don Juan asks Ana; “where people persuade themselves +that what is done can be undone by repentance; that what is spoken can +be unspoken by withdrawing it; that what is true can be annihilated +by a general agreement to give it the lie? No: heaven is the home of +the masters of reality: that is why I am going thither.” Ana answers +that she has had quite enough reality on earth and that she is going +to heaven for happiness. Don Juan advises her to remain in hell for +“hell is the home of the unreal and of the seekers for happiness. It is +the only refuge from heaven, which is ... the home of the masters of +reality, and from earth which is the home of the slaves of reality.” +And again he says he would enjoy the contemplation of that which +interests him above all things--“namely, Life: the force that ever +strives to attain greater power of contemplating itself.” The end of +this contemplation is to be the creation of a brain capable of wielding +an imagination fine enough to help Life in its struggle upward. + +With such a conception of life and its purpose Bernard Shaw entered the +lists, advocating many causes which might tend towards the realisation +of his idea. He managed to combine a firm anti-romantic attitude +with convinced humanitarian preferences. Thus he became vegetarian, +anti-vaccinationist, anti-vivisectionist and Socialist. His arguments +and advocacy were able, and therefore useful to all of these causes, +but it was as a Socialist that his genius for propaganda displayed +itself to best advantage. Long before the outer public had heard +of him, innumerable people whose minds were ripening under social +and industrial discontent came under the spell of his eloquence in +revolutionary club rooms, in Trafalgar Square and Hyde Park and other +open-air forums of the people, and at the meetings of the Fabian +Society. It was at the Fabian Society that he was heard to best +advantage, for there he was matched in debate with some of the keenest +intelligences and quickest minds in London. + +To Socialism, however, he contributed no original thought. He was +in the main content to advocate and buttress with eloquence and +dialectic the collectivist opportunism of his friend, Sidney Webb. +The constitutional methods of Webb and the Fabian Society have indeed +seemed at times difficult to square with Bernard Shaw’s written views +of what ought to be the true attitude of a revolutionist. Particularly +is this obvious in such later plays as _Man and Superman_ and +_Major Barbara_, where there are expressions which it is not easy +to construe otherwise than as advocacy of direct action and revolt. +Even in his Fabian utterances he has not always taken the orthodox +Fabian line, which is always uncompromisingly middle-class, as, for +instance, in his insistence on the complete acceptance of the idea of +economic equality as the only basis of the Socialist state, and it is +conceivable that, if the revolutionary philosophy of Shaw’s plays were +pushed to its logical conclusion, their author would find himself in +the ranks of those Socialists who believe less in parliamentary and +legal processes of reform than in active revolt. + +Bernard Shaw’s original contribution to the intellectual awakening +of the Eighteen Nineties was not so much an idea as a new attitude +of approaching all ideas and all facts. The approach by criticism +is by no means a novel method in itself, but it is always a novelty +in the stable mental atmosphere of English and, indeed, Teutonic +culture. Anything in the nature of criticism and its correlatives, +satire and caricature, are treated by most people in this country +as mere irreverence. Shaw has always been considered irreverent, +though probably few more earnest and essentially religious men ever +existed. But the cumulative effect of his wit has moved a mountain +range of indifference, and although the majority of those who go to +his plays go to laugh and remain to laugh (often beyond reason), many +remain to laugh and pray. These plays have had a more immediate and +more intelligent success in Germany, but they have attracted little +attention in France. This is not quite so hard to explain as it might +appear at first sight. In England we could not see the seriousness +of Shaw because his critical attack being local hit us before his +humour could win home. In Germany a similar mental _milieu_ +greeted him more readily because his irreverence, apparently the +outcome of criticism of British institutions and morals, but really +a criticism of modern civilised morality, did not hit Germany so +hard, and consequently his wit was free to carry on its subtle trade +in philosophy. But in France Shavianism was no new thing. Criticism +had been freer in that country for over a century than in any other +country in the world. Wit was no rarity; diabolonian humour no uncommon +weapon, and idea-play no novelty. France in fact was the birthplace of +modernity, and the modernity of Shaw was outmoded there before we began +to notice its existence here. Whilst England and Germany were murmuring +delightedly “brilliant”--“daring”--“clever”--at each successive Shavian +sally, the land of Voltaire and Rousseau, Baudelaire and Zola, Anatole +France and Brieux, could only say: “_Vieux jeu!_”--Queen Anne’s +dead! + +Shaw’s success in England has not been in any way national. It is +at best a class acceptance and generally bourgeois. The mass of the +people know him only as a name frequently appearing in the papers, +and often enough in connection with some statement or idea which to +them seemed incomprehensible or freakish. The reason is not far to +seek, for Bernard Shaw is an apostle to the Middle Class, as, indeed, +he is a product of that class. He displays all its characteristics in +his personality and his art, what are called his eccentricities of +thought and expression being often little more than advertisements of +his own respectability. Puritanical, economical, methodical, deeply +conscious of responsibility and a sound man of affairs, he sums up in +his own personality all the virtues of the class satirised by Ibsen in +_The Pillars of Society_. An examination of his most “advanced” +ideas urges the point; for even his dialectic is bourgeois from its +nicest subtleties to its most outrageous explosions. When he shocks +the middle classes, which he does very often, he shocks them with the +sort of squibs they would let off to shock themselves for fun; and when +he argues with them he uses precisely the kind of argument they use +in defence of the things they already know and like. As a Socialist +he invariably appeals to the bourgeois instinct of self-interest; +and much of his philosophy is a modern variation of the bourgeois +ideals of self-help and self-reliance--namely, self-assertion. He +tells the bourgeoisie that they are, politically, the neglected and +abused class, and advises them to retaliate upon their oppressors by +adopting a Socialism broad-based in the Utopian dream of a nationalised +respectability. And when his interested, but by no means convinced, +hearers stumble over the horrible thought that they may have to abandon +the financial basis of their estate, Bernard Shaw produces a defence of +money which turns consternation into delight and Socialist philosophy +into self-interest. + +All of which does not alter the freshness of his gospel nor the +veritability of his unique contribution to modern thought. As a critic +he has made it possible for all who desire to do so to look at life +in their own way, and in doing so to surround their egoism with a +margin of sweet tolerance; he has philosophised common-sense, and +made anti-climax a popular literary, conversational and oratorical +trick; and he has gone far towards reintroducing intelligence to the +British theatre and proving that in some circumstances an intelligent +drama is a sound commercial proposition. Above all he has demonstrated +the dramatic possibilities of discussion, and by so doing linked up +the literary drama with Platonic dialogue, and, at the same time, he +has left the theatre free to develop at the right moment its natural +emotional and imaginative tradition. + +If circumstances have forced Bernard Shaw to give to the middle classes +what was meant for humanity, it is consoling to think that his teaching +is big enough and good enough for the latter. In the essence of things +there is nothing in his teaching or his ideas fundamentally opposed to +broad human needs. Rightly understood, Shaw’s gospel is universal, and +none the less so because it is eclectic and has been assimilated and +selected by one of the most able and distinguished minds our nation has +produced from the thought of the most powerful and original of modern +intelligences. Schopenhauer, Richard Wagner, Friedrich Nietzsche, +Henrik Ibsen and Samuel Butler have all contributed material to augment +that gospel of reality which Shaw has preached with so much original +eloquence and wit. The Eighteen Nineties were largely indifferent to +the high and bewildering purpose of this teaching, although it is +not easy to imagine an atmosphere better suited for its development +either on the part of its creator or of his possible followers. It was +reserved for the new century to recognise Shaw’s great gifts by wide +discussion and much protest, and it is certain that protest will die +down when the ripe sanity and easy common-sense of his purpose is seen +through the satiric _diablerie_ of the mask he chooses to wear. + +No other modern writer in this country save Samuel Butler, and none +in Europe save Tolstoy and Ibsen, have looked at life so frankly as +Bernard Shaw. Zola, generally considered an arch-realist, but really a +romantic, was so obsessed by the shibboleth of scientific accumulation +of evidence that his vision is as blurred as that of Herbert Spencer; +Schopenhauer and Nietzsche both looked at life through the distorting +glass of theory; Ruskin and Carlyle saw only parts of life. But Tolstoy +and Ibsen, Butler and Shaw possessed the faculty of looking at life +with photographic vision. Realists of this type are the outcome of +that impulsion towards frankness which produced the Impressionists. +Manet and Degas are their prototypes in the graphic arts; and just as +these artists demanded and accepted with all its consequences the full +reality and accent of light, so the artist-philosophers, working in the +same spirit, allowed light absolute freedom in the realms of observing +intellect and informing imagination. + +To look at life until you see it clearly is Bernard Shaw’s avowed aim. +His concern being with humanity and the fine arts, he has made it his +business to see these manifestations of life clearly and deduce his +philosophy from them without fear of what has been said or believed or +experienced. And although he now sets a higher value on contemplation, +in the Nineties he knew that contemplation was not enough in itself. +Writing of life, in 1896, he said: “Only by intercourse with men and +women can we learn anything about it. This involves an active life, +not a contemplative one; for unless you do something in the world, you +can have no real business to transact with men; and unless you love +and are loved, you can have no intimate relations with them. And you +must transact business, wirepull politics, discuss religion, give and +receive hate, love and friendship, with all sorts of people before +you can acquire the sense of humanity. If you are to acquire the +sense sufficiently to be a philosopher, you must do all these things +unconditionally.” Facing life in suchwise himself he has hammered out +his own religion of art, activity and contemplation, and this religion +finds a voice in all his work, and is summed up in many passages, but +in none so intimately and so personally as in a passage in _The +Savoy_ essay, “On Going to Church”: “Any place where men dwell, +village or city, is a reflection of the consciousness of every single +man. In my consciousness there is a market, a garden, a dwelling, a +workshop, a lovers’ walk--above all, a cathedral. My appeal to the +master-builder is: Mirror this cathedral for me in enduring stone; make +it with hands; let it direct its sure and clear appeal to my senses, +so that when my spirit is vaguely groping after an elusive mood my +eye shall be caught by the skyward tower, showing me where, within +the cathedral, I may find my way to the cathedral within me.” Reading +these words one might have paused, wondering whether Shaw would always +believe mysticism to be argument about nothing, and whether his work +might not bridge the rationalist gap between the old mysticism and the +new. + + + + + CHAPTER XV + + THE HIGHER DRAMA + + “If every manager considers it due to himself to produce nothing + cheaper than _The Prisoner of Zenda_, not to mention the + splendours of the Lyceum, then goodbye to high dramatic art. + The managers will, perhaps, retort that, if high dramatic art + means Ibsen, then they ask for nothing better than to get rid + of it. I am too polite to reply, bluntly, that high dramatic + art _does_ mean Ibsen; that Ibsen’s plays are at this + moment the head of the dramatic body; and that though an actor + manager can, and often does, do without a head, dramatic art + cannot.”--G.B.S. in _The Saturday Review_, 1897. + + +If it takes more than two swallows to make a summer, it certainly +takes more than two playwrights to make a dramatic renaissance. That +being admitted, no one could say that the plays of Oscar Wilde and +Bernard Shaw constituted in themselves a “new” drama. Such a definite +achievement cannot be credited to the period. But what can be credited +to the period is the creation of an atmosphere in which a new drama +might flourish at the appointed hour. This was done by the art of +criticism, and chiefly by Bernard Shaw, William Archer and J. T. Grein, +whose example and ideal was Ibsen. These three critics were more +than convinced and ardent Ibsenists; they were capable and tireless +in propagation of the cause, Bernard Shaw as critic and philosopher, +William Archer as critic and translator of the Master’s plays, and J. +T. Grein as critic, producer and founder of the Independent Theatre, +the earliest definite home of the Higher Drama. And with them, but +not of them, was A. B. Walkley, critic pure and simple, pouring oil +upon the waters of revolt with irony and intellectual banter born of +a capacity for taking an uncompromising middle attitude, and with a +common-sense which amounted in itself to genius. + +These critics differed from their kind by an avowedly personal +approach, and they flaunted their apostasy in the face of those who +were content to maintain the old theatrical methods. The appeal to +personal taste might easily have been ignored by the upholders of +convention had it not been made by critics of undoubted skill and +unanswerable certainty of aim. The new critics accepted their own view +of the state of the drama with as much deliberation as the old accepted +the view of tradition and convention. They were frankly impressionist +and autobiographical. Walkley called his first collection of critical +essays _Playhouse Impressions_ (1892), and admitted to adventuring +among masterpieces in the approved method of Anatole France. The +diaries of Marie Bashkirtseff were among the books of the hour, and +he coined the verb “to bashkirtseff,” for the purpose, emphasising +a method which had also been defended by Oscar Wilde. Shaw was even +more autobiographical, but prophecy, and purpose other than the +entertainment of a moment or an hour, lurked behind his most indiscreet +confession. He did not argue from precedent, it is true, but he sought +all the more energetically to establish new precedents, chief among +which were a drama of ideas and “a pit of philosophers”--and Ibsen, +Ibsen, Ibsen, _toujours_ Ibsen! + +The all-or-nothing seriousness of G.B.S. is happily recorded in the +following passage from Walkley’s book, which purports to describe +the author’s friend, Euthyphro, but whose identity is otherwise +obvious:--“A universal genius, a brilliant political economist, a +Fabian of the straitest sect of the Fabians, a critic (of other arts +than the dramatic), _comme il y en a peu_, he persists, where the +stage is concerned, in crying for the moon, and will not be satisfied, +as the rest of us have learned to be, with the only attainable +substitute, a good wholesome cheese. His standard of taste is as much +too high as Crito’s is too low. He asks from the theatre more than +the theatre can give, and quarrels with the theatre because it is +theatrical. He lumps _La Tosca_ and _A Man’s Shadow_ together +as ‘French machine-made plays,’ and, because he is not edified by them, +refuses to be merely amused. Because _The Dead Heart_ is not on +the level of a Greek tragedy, he is blind to its merits as a pantomime. +He refuses to recognise the advance made by Mr Pinero, because Mr +Pinero has not yet advanced as far as Henrik Ibsen. Half a loaf, the +wise agree, is better than no bread; but because it is only half a +loaf, Euthyphro complains that they have given him a stone.” + +More than twenty years have passed since the above words were written, +and what A. B. Walkley imagined to be a demand for more than the +theatre could give has actually produced a new drama, if not a new +theatre, and the succeeding generation, in the person of Gordon Craig, +is already making demands which even iconoclasts of the Nineties would +have considered impossible. + +William Archer is the father of modern dramatic criticism in this +country, and he was introducing ideas and an intelligent seriousness +into this disappointing and most thankless branch of criticism as far +back as the middle eighties, with such books as _About the Theatre_ +(1886) and _Masks or Faces?_ (1888). He shared the honours of being one +of the earliest translators of Ibsen with Edmond Gosse, Eleanor Marx +Aveling (daughter of Karl Marx), and his own brother, Charles Archer, +who collaborated with him in several translations now in the complete +English edition.[4] + +On 7th June 1889 Charles Charrington began the dramatic renaissance by +producing _A Doll’s House_ at the Novelty Theatre, with Janet Achurch +in the part of Nora. The play had been called the _Hernani_ of the +new dramatic movement in England, and the title has been justified +to the full. An interest was aroused such as had not been known in +artistic circles since the first performances of Wagner’s operas, and +the appearance of the Impressionist painters; and it was increased a +thousandfold by the production of _Ghosts_ and _Hedda Gabler_, in +1891, when the new manifestation of drama turned the opposition of +the older critics into indignation and reduced their criticism to a +wild display of invective and vituperation. It was, as William Archer +said at the time, “probably the most obstinate and rancorous prejudice +recorded in the history of the stage.” Bernard Shaw’s account of +Clement Scott’s criticism of _Ghosts_ in _The Daily Telegraph_, and the +famous leading article in the same issue (14th March 1891), recalls the +anxiety of the older generation when confronted with this frank drama. +The leading article, he wrote, compared the play to an open drain, a +loathsome sore unbandaged, a dirty act done publicly, or a lazar-house +with all its doors and windows open. Bestial, cynical, disgusting, +poisonous, sickly, delirious, indecent, loathsome, fetid, literary +carrion, crapulous stuff, clinical confessions: all these epithets were +used in the article as descriptions of Ibsen’s work. One passage in +the same leader said: “Realism is one thing; but the nostrils of the +audience must not be visibly held before a play can be stamped as true +to nature. It is difficult to expose in decorous words,” the writer +continued, “the gross and almost putrid indecorum of this play.” And as +more than one critic called upon the law to protect the players against +such dramas, some idea may be formed of the righteous indignation +aroused at the inception of the new drama. + +After the first experiment with _A Doll’s House_, Charles Charrington +took his company on a world tour, and Janet Achurch played the part +of Nora over one hundred and fifty times in Australia, New Zealand, +India and Egypt. This tour took something like three years, and when +the pioneers returned to London they found Ibsen engaging the interest +of all the more thoughtful playgoers. _A Doll’s House_ was therefore +revived at the Avenue Theatre (now the Playhouse) on 19th April 1892, +and the same year saw the first stage performance of plays by Oscar +Wilde and Bernard Shaw. The following year, however, was more memorable +in the dramatic renaissance, for it saw the production of no less +than six plays by Ibsen--_The Master Builder_, _Rosmersholm_, _Hedda +Gabler_, _Brand_ (Fourth Act), _An Enemy of the People_, and _A Doll’s +House_, and the Independent Theatre produced five modern plays, one +adaptation and one translation, and, more important still, three by +modern British playwrights: _The Strike at Arlingford_, by George Moore +(his first play), _The Black Cat_, by John Todhunter, and _A Question +of Memory_, by “Michael Field.” Besides these came _The Second Mrs +Tanqueray_, by Pinero, _A Woman of No Importance_, by Oscar Wilde, and +_The Bauble Shop_, by Henry Arthur Jones, all of which were in the +modern movement and contributing to the newly awakened intelligent +interest in the theatre. + +The appetite for a new drama thus created might have encouraged +managers and propagandist promoters to venture further afield, but it +did nothing of the sort. After 1893, and for practically seven years, +there was very little encouragement for those who stood for the higher +drama. It is true that plays by advanced foreigners as important as +Björnson Björnstjerne, Maurice Maeterlinck, Sudermann and Echegaray, +and a number of classical dramas managed to get produced; but Bernard +Shaw could find only occasional chances of production for his own +plays, and the younger school, since evolved out of his teaching +and criticism, was not yet born. The new drama was in the main an +occasional affair, highly experimental, and appealing only to a small +and seriously minded group of “intellectuals” in London. They very +largely belonged to the literary fringe of the Fabian Society and other +reform and revolutionary organisations, and these were practically the +sole supporters of the efforts of the Independent Theatre, the Stage +Society and the New Century Theatre. + +Such a poor result from early efforts towards a new drama ought not +to have been, and, in fact, was not, unexpected. The new movement was +so radical in its demands that it had first to create conditions in +which it could exist. Everything was against rapid progress. It was +not a mere question of art, dramatic or theatrical; it was a question +also of economics, of professional interests, and of theatrical habit +and public indifference to anything that did not entertain by laughter +or tears. The new drama already existed on the Continent in the plays +of Ibsen, Hauptmann, Maeterlinck, Sudermann, Strindberg and others; +and both theatres and audiences were coming into existence in support +of it. But here, save for Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde, we possessed +no native plays at all comparable with these foreign ones, and until +there was a certainty of such plays being produced few authors could be +expected to go on writing them. For that reason the new movement was +forced to be mainly critical. Its chief material objects of attack were +the dominance of the actor manager and his demand for plays written +around himself, and the general theatrical custom of seeking only plays +that promised a “long run.” These two conditions stood in the way of a +new drama because the modern drama, being impressionist and realist, +did not see life as an episode dominated by an attractive personality +more or less resembling some popular actor manager; it only offered +such eminence by accident, as in the case of Dr Stockmann in _An +Enemy of the People_, which was produced with considerable popular +success, and the minimum of Ibsenism, by Beerbohm Tree, in 1893. And, +secondly, the only chance of promoting variety of plays of the new +type, actors in sufficient numbers to perform them, and audiences of +sufficient intelligence and sufficient interest to maintain them, was +by a return to the repertory system. Abnormal rents for theatres, +abnormal salaries for principal actors, and the absence of small +and convenient theatres were also among the first obstacles to the +realisation of these ambitions. + +But these were not all the seemingly insurmountable difficulties; +the greatest stumbling block was the creation of an audience large +enough to make the newer plays a financial possibility. This was no +easy matter. At no time are there many people in this or perhaps any +country who can be relied upon to show much enthusiasm for ideas and +psychological and social problems, especially in a theatre which has +for generations been looked upon as a place of idle amusement. The +advocates of the higher drama were serious and purposeful persons. With +the exception of Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde, there was no laughter +in them. They and their followers could laugh, but they preferred the +mental smile. Their demand was for dramatic literature: dramas which +represented a personal point of view, expressed in impressionistic +terms revealing the play of temperament in conflict with convention, +and will in conflict with circumstance, and always indicating by +implication the ideas underlying the theme. Such plays were not only +to be playable; they were to be readable as well--they were to combine +the good stage play and the good book. As we know, the higher dramatic +movement did produce plays answering these demands. But it was not +always so easy to reveal the idea behind the play. Bernard Shaw had to +write _The Quintessence of Ibsenism_ to show what Ibsen’s plays +meant, and long prefaces and appendices to show what his own plays +meant. Endless were the discussions as to the meaning of _The Master +Builder_ (Israel Zangwill called it “The Master Bewilderer”); and +intellectuals of all kinds yearned for the prefaces Ibsen might have +written but didn’t. But the old Norwegian dramatist let them yearn. +With the plays of Shaw the higher drama became a drama of discussion. +It was realistic only incidentally; in inception it was problematic, +and in effect argumentative, without any definite conclusion. Ideas +were generally left very much in the air until the play was printed, +when the author told you all about his aims in a long, idea-laden and +entertaining preface. This argumentative tendency developed in his art +until the action of his later plays became entirely conversational; and +to prevent any illusions as to his intentions he called these plays +discussions. + +Out of the discussion of plays and ideas the new drama ultimately +came. Translations of good foreign plays began to appear frequently, +and they were read by a select but ever-growing public. Interest +also was aroused in the older dramatists, and both Henry Irving and +Beerbohm Tree drew large audiences to their highly decorated revivals +of Shakespeare; a still more genuine enthusiasm was created by the +excellent Shakespearean Repertoire Company of F. R. Benson, in the +provinces. But with all this activity the main line of the modernist +advance was diverted by a characteristic compromise on the part of the +public. Ibsen did not pay; but it was felt that realism in a modern +setting, if the themes in themselves were likeable and capable of a +sentimental response, might be popular. Obviously, the game would be +to hearten realism with a dash of sentimentalism; in short, to water +down Ibsen; not to declare that “it is right to do something hitherto +regarded as infamous” (_vide_ G.B.S.), but to treat seriously, +in a play with no specific purpose, something hitherto considered +as naughty and therefore only deserving of facetious comment, and +to call it a “problem play.” And if you could provoke a tear at the +naughtiness out of which a Labiche would have raised a laugh, so much +the better--you would be both modern and popular. + +This actually happened. Oscar Wilde did it with _A Woman of No +Importance_; Henry Arthur Jones did it with _The Case of +Rebellious Susan_, and Arthur Wing Pinero did it with _The Second +Mrs Tanqueray_. It is not to be doubted that these playwrights were +pioneers of the new movement, but it should not be forgotten that they +were pioneers by compromise. Henry Arthur Jones was an upholder of +realism, but his plays of this time do not approximate to the realism +of Ibsen or Tolstoy or Strindberg; they are realistic only in so far +as realism is consistent with the conviction that the artist is an +interpreter of dreams, a translator of real life into imaginative +concepts. Quite seriously, logically and successfully, Wilde, Pinero +and Jones worked along these lines, and by so doing placed themselves +in the direct tradition of the established drama, upon which they +succeeded in doing little more than graft some new branches. Now Ibsen +possessed only the most elementary connection with traditional drama. +He was as distinct from the current trend of European drama that had +preceded him as Euripides was from the Greek drama, as Molière was +from the French drama, and as Shakespeare was from the English drama, +which had preceded them. Ibsen discovered theatrical reality, and he +made it so real that half the opposition to his drama was due to the +discomfort most people experience when brought face to face with a +new revelation of facts or ideas. Those who compromised achieved no +such effect; they were merely illusionists, using reality to further +illusion, rather than illusion to further reality. + +Bernard Shaw was not deceived by this quasi-modernism. In 1895 he +wrote: “The unfortunate new dramatist has ... to write plays so +extraordinarily good that, like Mozart’s operas, they succeed in spite +of inadequate execution. This is all very well for geniuses like Ibsen; +but it is rather hard on the ordinary purveyor of the drama. The +managers do not seem to me yet to grasp this feature of the situation. +If they did, they would only meddle with the strongest specimens of +the new drama, instead of timidly going to the old firms and ordering +moderate plays cut in the new style. No doubt the success of _The +Second Mrs Tanqueray_ and _The Case of Rebellious Susan_ seemed +to support the view that the new style had better be tried cautiously +by an old hand. But then _Mrs Tanqueray_ had not the faintest +touch of the new spirit in it; and recent events suggest that its +success was due to a happy cast of the dice by which the play found an +actress[5] who doubled its value and had hers doubled by it.” William +Archer took a more lenient view of the situation. He referred to the +play in 1893 as “the one play of what may be called European merit +which the modern English stage can yet boast,” and he went on to advise +Pinero’s fellow-craftsmen to follow the lead set by _The Second Mrs +Tanqueray_, because Pinero had “inserted the thin end of the wedge,” +and “I firmly believe,” he said, “that not only the ambition but the +material interests of our other dramatists will prompt them to follow +his lead, and that, therefore, we are indeed on the threshold of a new +epoch.” + +That proved to be true. _The Second Mrs Tanqueray_, although it +was not of the “advanced movement,” was really a part of the movement. +It was the first effect on the English stage of the influence of Ibsen +and the propagandists of the modern drama. And even its faults as a +play are faults only in comparison with the Ibsen standard. It is a +play possessing both intelligent idea and problem, but above all it +possesses a masterly stage technique which alone makes it worthy to +be considered with the works of great modern masters. There is little +doubt again that the modernist plays of Pinero and Henry Arthur Jones, +and certain productions of R. C. Carton and Sydney Grundy, did tone up +the moribund popular stage, and so aided the revolutionists by teaching +the average playgoer to tune his brain to a higher seriousness than had +hitherto been his habit. + +But the real expression of the new movement, the main tendency, did not +find an outlet during the Nineties. That was not possible until the +close of the decade, when, in the person of H. Granville Barker, the +Stage Society found the medium for the realisation of the decade-old +dreams of the leaders of the modern movement. Dramatist, actor and +producer, Granville Barker was the man whom the moment and the movement +required, and after several successes within the Stage Society he took +a daring leap on to the regular stage by engaging, with C. E. Vedrenne +as business partner, the Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Square. By doing +so he proved that the plays of Bernard Shaw had immense popular and, +as a natural outcome, financial possibilities of success; that it was +also possible, within certain limits, to run a repertory theatre, and, +perhaps most important of all, that we had a growing native school of +modern dramatists of power and distinction. This new school included +John Galsworthy, St John Hankin, John Masefield, Frederick Fenn, and +Granville Barker himself, whose play, _The Voysey Inheritance_, +stands among the finest products of the dramatic renaissance. These +plays have since been performed, along with others which follow in the +new tradition, at modern repertory theatres in Glasgow, Manchester and +Liverpool, and by touring companies appealing to just such audiences +as the men of the Nineties desired to create. + +The development of the movement on the regular stage as patronised by +the average playgoer is not so marked. But even here the new spirit +has had its effect, for though melodrama, facetious comedy and musical +farce still maintain preposterously long “runs,” showing that their +place, as it is bound to be, is as secure as ever, it is no longer +impossible to find intelligent entertainment at any time of the year +in one or another of the London theatres. The higher dramatic activity +born in the last decade of the old century has lived thus far into the +new, justifying the energy which supported its inception. + + + + + CHAPTER XVI + + THE NEW FICTION + + +The realist movement spread among novelists and writers of fiction with +even more rapidity than it invaded the dramatic realm. With epidemic +suddenness writers of all kinds began to be realistic in their fiction. +The reading public was not unprepared for the new tendency, for, at +about the same time, a cheap edition of the novels of Zola was put upon +the market and devoured eagerly without anybody appearing to be more +than pleasantly shocked. The edition was expurgated somewhat, but even +then passages were left untouched which only a very few years earlier +would have aroused the condemnation of the Nonconformist conscience. +Still, what a Frenchman might do with impunity did not go without +question when repeated, even in a milder way, by native writers. There +was a storm-in-a-tea-cup in certain circles, for instance, when Thomas +Hardy issued _Jude the Obscure_, and George Moore, _Esther +Waters_; and the storm was heightened on the appearance of Grant +Allen’s _Woman Who Did_, and such realistic studies of slum life +as Arthur Morrison’s _Tales of Mean Streets_ and _A Child of +the Jago_. But even this blew over when the newspapers considered +their readers had had enough of the subject, and no more serious damage +was done than a few suppressions by the autocrats of the popular +lending libraries, notably in the cases of _Jude the Obscure_ and +_Esther Waters_, which prohibitions, as might have been expected, +had the result of drawing more than usual attention to these remarkable +books. The matter in the end was not settled one way or the other; it +simply lapsed, and publishers and authors proceeded to develop from +frankness to frankness without either endangering their reputations, +their readers’ morals, or, ultimately, of causing surprise or sustained +opposition from any quarter. + +It is a curious fact, however, that, whilst the more daring of the +realists aroused a new interest in the art of the novel, there were +still more critics to denounce than to uphold the new method. Not only +was this the fact with reference to realism, but it was the fact also +with reference to the problem novel, what was called “the novel with +a purpose,” and also to the still more modern fiction of temperament +and psychological analysis represented by such writers as George +Egerton and Sarah Grand. Discussions were lengthy and heated, and +many good people of the time, looking backward at the large geniality +and splendid sanity of Charles Dickens, the high moral purpose of +George Eliot, and the fine culture and unimpeachable respectability +of Thackeray, had grave forebodings for their own times and serious +doubts as to the wisdom of the successors of the accepted masters. They +forgot, of course, that the realism of _Oliver Twist_ had been +criticised in its day, and that there were even people who doubted the +wisdom of Thackeray’s mild frankness in _Vanity Fair_. + +What the objectors did not realise, and this was perhaps the most +important circumstance of all, was that the new fiction was big enough +and attractive enough to be worth a fight, and that that in itself +was a sign of literary health and vitality. Discussion is always a +characteristic of renascent periods in art and life. “Art lives upon +discussion,” avows Henry James, “upon experiment, upon curiosity, upon +variety of attempt, upon the exchange of views, and the comparison of +standpoints; and there is a presumption that the times when no one has +anything particular to say about it, and has no reason to give for +practice or preference, though they may be times of honour, are not +times of development--are times, possibly, even, a little of dullness.” +There can be little doubt that the times under review were times of +creative development, and above all they were far from dull in any +branch of art, particularly in that of the novel. + +A new impetus and a wider range of action, amounting to a new lease of +life, had been given to that literary form by the abolition of the old +three-volume method of publication, whose unwieldy size and exorbitant +price had had the effect of chaining the novel to the circulating +libraries. Many authors, notably Hall Caine, worked tirelessly for the +abolition of the outmoded three-volume novel, and finally they won a +victory more swiftly and more completely than their wildest hopes had +anticipated. After a remarkably short fight the publishers capitulated +and introduced the now familiar and, until quite recently, omnipresent +six-shilling volume. The passing of the old novel format was important +because it represented a great deal more than the passing of a mere +form of publication. Actually it was the capitulation of a type of +novel: the old sentimental lending-library novel of polite romantic +atmosphere and crudely happy endings; the novel which was guaranteed to +tax no brain by thought and to vex no code of morals by revolutionary +suggestions, but by a determined rejection of anything approaching +problem or idea, or even psychology, was calculated to produce that +drowsy state of mild peacefulness which many people believe to be +the end and aim of all good literature. There were few to regret its +demise, and even these were ironical in the hour of regret. Chief among +them was Rudyard Kipling, who gave the departed three-volume novel +poetical honours in some verses called “The Three-Decker”: + + “We asked no social questions--we pumped no hidden shame-- + We never talked obstetrics when the Little Stranger came: + We left the Lord in Heaven, we left the fiends in Hell. + We weren’t exactly Yussufs, but--Zuleika didn’t tell.” + +The new fiction did all these things, and, to its credit be it said, +it did them within the limits of the art of the novel and with the +ultimate result of increasing the number of novel readers beyond all +bounds. + +Some idea of the more reputable body of opinion aroused against the +manifestation of realistic tendencies in literature may be gathered +from an article, entitled “Reticence in Literature,” contributed +by Arthur Waugh to the first number of _The Yellow Book_. The +beginnings of the new frankness, particularly in its insistence upon +sex, is traced in this article to Swinburne; but the frankness of the +modern novel had descended directly from the French realists. Arthur +Waugh detected two developments of modern realism; one towards excess +promoted by effeminacy, “by the want of restraint which starts from +enervated sensations”; and the other towards “the excess which results +from a certain brutal virility, which proceeds from coarse familiarity +with indulgence.” He went on to say that, “The one whispers, the +other shouts; the one is the language of the courtesan, the other of +the bargee. What we miss in both alike,” he continued, “is that true +frankness which springs from the artistic and moral temperament; the +episodes are not part of a whole in unity with itself; the impression +they leave upon the reader is not the impression of Hogarth’s pictures; +in one form they employ all their art to render vice attractive; in the +other, with absolutely no art at all, they merely reproduce, with the +fidelity of the kodak, scenes and situations the existence of which we +all acknowledge, while taste prefers to forget them.” He then proceeded +to stigmatise the latest development of literary frankness which he +believed to be both inartistic and a danger to art. “A new school has +arisen which combines the characteristics of effeminacy and brutality. +In its effeminate aspect it plays with the subtler emotions of sensual +pleasure, on its brutal side it has developed into that class of +fiction which for want of a better word I must call chirurgical. In +poetry it deals with very much the same passions as those which we have +placed in the verses to which allusion has been made above[6]; but, +instead of leaving these refinements of lust to the haunts to which +they are fitted, it has introduced them into the domestic chamber, +and permeated marriage with the ardours of promiscuous intercourse. +In fiction it affects its heroines with acquired diseases of names +unmentionable, and has debased the beauty of maternity by analysis +of the process of gestation. Surely the inartistic temperament can +scarcely abuse literature further. I own I can conceive nothing less +beautiful.” Tennyson was quoted in a familiar couplet to buttress this +argument, and the critic concluded by advocating reticence and humility +in art as being the most necessary equipment for the production of +beauty and the achievement of immortality. + +The line of defence taken by the upholders of frankness in literature +began by repudiating any precise desire for either immortality, beauty +or even morality. The modernist was not only frank, he was frankly +amoral; his one concern was to get into his work the quality of +life, the sense of reality, irrespective of the presence or absence +of moral ideas, leaving beauty and immortality to chance. At that +period there was no very particular denial of the idea or necessity +of beauty, as there is among the more “advanced” artists of to-day, +nor did the writers of the time repudiate immortality. Immortality, +they implied, should, like Whistler’s idea of art, happen, but as to +beauty, they were convinced that what they did sincerely, truthfully +and realistically, would ultimately be considered beautiful. And +Hubert Crackanthorpe, in a reply to Arthur Waugh, was so convinced of +the righteousness of the modern method in fiction that he was able to +write: “Let our artistic objector but weary the world sufficiently +with his despair concerning the permanence of the cheerlessness of +modern realism, and some day a man will arise who will give us a +study of human happiness as fine, as vital as anything we owe to +Guy de Maupassant or to Ibsen. That man will have accomplished the +infinitely difficult, and in admiration and in awe shall we bow down +our heads before him.” And this youthful and accomplished realist was +arrogant enough on the one hand to admit that fiction was a young art +“struggling desperately to reach expression, with no great past to +guide it,” and humble enough, on the other, to admit that it was matter +for wonder, not that the new school stumbled into certain pitfalls, but +that they did not fall headlong into a hundred more. + +But what may be called the artistic defence was not the only bulwark +against the attack of the old school. Fresh defences were found +necessary owing to the nervousness of moralists who, weary of decrying +the artistic value of realism, attacked it on ethical and even +pathological lines. The new fiction, it was said, was calculated to +undermine morality not only because it was immoral, but because it was +“morbid,” “neurotic,” and “diseased.” Havelock Ellis defended Thomas +Hardy’s _Jude the Obscure_ against this line of attack, in _The +Savoy_; and, in that article, he took the war into the enemy’s +camp by saying that, the more exact an artist’s powers of observation +became, the more vital and profound became his art as an instrument +of morality. “The fresher and more intimate his vision of Nature, +the more startling his picture of morals.” And in defence of Hardy’s +treatment of the passionate experiences of Jude and Sue against the +charge of neurosis, he says: “Jude and Sue are represented as crushed +by a civilisation to which they were not born, and though civilisation +may in some respects be regarded as a disease and unnatural, in others +it may be said to bring out those finer vibrations of Nature which are +overlaid by rough and bucolic conditions of life. The refinement of +sexual sensibility with which this book largely deals is precisely such +a vibration. To treat Jude, who wavers between two women, and Sue, who +finds the laws of marriage too mighty for her lightly poised organism, +as shocking monstrosities, reveals a curious attitude in the critics +who have committed themselves to that view. Clearly they consider human +sexual relationships to be as simple as those of the farmyard. They +are as shocked as a farmer would be to find that a hen had views of +her own concerning the lord of the harem. If, let us say, you decide +that Indian Game and Plymouth Rock make a good cross, you put your +cocks and hens together, and the matter is settled, and if you decide +that a man and a woman are in love with each other, you marry them and +the matter is likewise settled for the whole term of their natural +lives. I suppose that the farmyard view is really the view of the +ordinary wholesome-minded novelist--I mean of course in England--and +of his ordinary critic. Indeed, in Europe generally, a distinguished +German anthropologist has lately declared, sensible and experienced +men still often exhibit a knowledge of sexual matters such as we might +expect from a milkmaid. But assuredly the farmyard view corresponds +imperfectly to the facts of human life in our time. Such things as +_Jude_ is made of are, in our time at all events, life, and life +is still worthy of her muse.” + +And Vincent O’Sullivan, a modern of the moderns, in a plea which made +hash of the old sentimental library novel, wrote: “It is more easy--if +more degrading--to write a certain kind of novel. To take a fanciful +instance, it is more easy to write the history of Miss Perfect; how, +upon the death of her parents, she comes to reside in the village, and +lives there mildly and sedately; and how one day, in the course of +her walk abroad, she is noticed by the squire’s lady, who straightway +transports her to the Hall. And, of course, she soon becomes mighty +well with the family, and the squire’s son becomes enamoured of her. +Then the clouds must gather: and a villain lord comes on the scene +to bombard her virtue with clumsy artillery. Finding after months +that her virtue dwells in an impregnable citadel, he turns to, and +jibes and goads the young squire to the fighting point. And, presto! +there they are, hard at it with bare steel, on the Norman beach, of +a drizzling morning; and the squire who is just pressing hot upon +my lord, when--it’s hey! for the old love and ho! for the new--out +rushes Miss Perfect to our great amazement, and falls between the +swords down on the stinging sands in the sight of the toiling sea. Now +I maintain, that a novel woven of these meagre threads, and set out +in three volumes and a brave binding, would put up a good front at +Mudie’s; would become, it too, after a while, morality packed in a box. +For nowadays we seem to nourish our morals with the thinnest milk and +water, with a good dose of sugar added, and not a suspicion of lemon at +all.” The need of such a plea for frank record of personal impression, +even though it led writers to “go out in the black night and follow +their own sullen will-o’-the-wisps,” is all the more remarkable because +it came at a time when realism had fought the good fight and was near +upon winning. + +It is not necessary at this date to defend the realism of the +Nineties, for franknesses then considered shocking are now accepted as +commonplaces of fiction. That does not mean that the merely silly novel +of shallow romance has passed away; not even the Eighteen Nineties +could bring about so complete a revolution as that. But it does +mean that, since the _fin de siècle_ battle was fought between +reticence and frankness, the bounds of literary expression have been so +broadened as to make it possible for readers of all types, even those +who can survive a considerable demand upon their thinking powers, to +find fiction to suit their needs. The popular novel of the past, and to +some extent of the present, ended more or less happily with the sound +of wedding bells. The new novel very often began there. It was realised +by the modern school of novelists that married life provided a whole +realm of sensations and experiences hitherto neglected by their art or +but partially exploited. Into this realm they plunged with enthusiasm, +and so distinct were the results, when put into the form of fiction, +that readers who had been familiar with them in real life were so +amazed with this revelation of truth that, almost in self-defence, they +were forced to conclude that the new fiction was scandalous when it was +not morbid. + +But although realistic and introspective fiction was the chief +contribution of the period to this form of literary art, all kinds +of fiction seemed to receive an impetus, which resulted in a general +improvement in style, imagination and thoughtfulness. The influence +of Meredith, Hardy and, to a lesser extent, Henry James was apparent +in much of the work of the younger writers; whilst French fiction +writers, such as Flaubert, Huysmans and Guy de Maupassant, were having +a profound effect upon other imaginations. The realistic school +produced George Moore, Hubert Crackanthorpe, Arthur Morrison, George +Gissing, as more or less acknowledged disciples, and it influenced +the birth of occasional novels from writers who were not definitely +realistic, or specifically novelists, but who were impelled by the +mood of the moment to produce works in key with the realistic mood. +Among such novels may be named _The Woman Who Did_, by Grant +Allen, _No. 5 John Street_, by Richard Whiteing, and _Liza of +Lambeth_, by Somerset Maugham. Another important contribution to +the fiction of the period was made by a group of women novelists who +showed remarkable powers of psychological analysis and observation, +and in several instances the faculty of expressing that modern revolt +of women which found a voice in Olive Schreiner’s _Story of an +African Farm_ (1881). Among these writers were Sarah Grand, “George +Egerton” (Mrs Golding Bright), “John Oliver Hobbes” (Mrs Craigie), +“Iota” (Mrs Mannington Caffyn), Mrs W. K. Clifford, Menie Muriel +Dowie, Emma Frances Brooke, Beatrice Harraden and Elizabeth Robins. +Mrs Humphry Ward must also be reckoned among the women novelists of +the period, although she, as I have noted in an earlier chapter, had +an established reputation as the author of _Robert Elsmere_, +written in 1888. Equally characteristic of the period were the writers +of comedy-fiction. Some of the early novels of H. G. Wells, such as +_The Wonderful Visit_ (1895), and _The Wheels of Chance_ +(1896), are in this class, as are also the witty works of John Oliver +Hobbes, particularly _The Sinner’s Comedy_ (1892), _A Study in +Temptations_ (1893) and _The School for Saints_ (1897). But the +most characteristic writers of comedy-fiction were: Henry Harland, E. +F. Benson, G. S. Street and Frederick Wedmore. + +It was during the Nineties also that the use of dialect in fiction +delighted an ever-growing number of novel readers. First among writers +in this manner stands J. M. Barrie, whose studies in Scottish life were +a revelation and a delight to a vast number of people on both sides of +the Tweed, and elsewhere. The first of these, _Auld Licht Idylls_ +and _A Window in Thrums_, were published respectively in 1888 +and 1889. Then followed _The Little Minister_, in 1891, and +_Sentimental Tommy_ and _Margaret Ogilvy_, in 1896. Inspired +by the success of these works, S. R. Crockett produced many Scottish +studies, beginning with _The Stickit Minister_, in 1893, and “Ian +Maclaren” published the phenomenally successful _Beside the Bonnie +Brier Bush_, in 1894. Jane Barlow did something of the same service +for Ireland in her _Bogland Studies_ (1892); and the discovery by +novelists of the value of local colour doubtless made for the success +of Israel Zangwill’s fine studies of Jewish life, _Children of the +Ghetto_ (1892), _Ghetto Tragedies_ (1893), and _The King +of the Schnorrers_ (1894); and also to the same interest must be +attributed the revival of the Cockney dialect in fiction, set to a +tragic theme by realists like Arthur Morrison and Somerset Maugham, but +given a delightfully humorous turn by Barry Pain, Pett Ridge and Edwin +Pugh. + +Romantic fiction once more became distinguished during the period, +and in some of its finest results it owed its renaissance to Science +which, almost a century before, Keats had said would clip the wings of +Romance. This new romance produced two of the most gifted of modern +writers: Rudyard Kipling and H. G. Wells. The first of that series +of scientific romances which has made the name of H. G. Wells famous +throughout the world, _The Time Machine_, was published in 1895, +and in 1898 and 1899 he published _The War of the Worlds_ and +_When the Sleeper Wakes_. But the spirit of romance not only +breathed life into the facts of science; once more taking its cue from +the realists it revivified the spirit of adventure in the modern world. +Robert Louis Stevenson had shown the way, and during the Nineties he +was writing in collaboration with his son-in-law, Lloyd Osbourne, +tales, like _The Wrecker_ and _The Ebb Tide_, which made the +old feel young again and the young desire to live more adventurously. +But in the year 1895 came a new master with a book called _Almayer’s +Folly_. He was a sailor by profession, a Pole by birth, but he wrote +in English, a strange, strong and arresting English, and his name was +Joseph Conrad. In 1896 he published _An Outcast of the Islands_, +and in the two succeeding years _The Nigger of the Narcissus_ +and _Tales of Unrest_. Conrad was not alone in his mastery of +the art of turning experience into romance, for with him were Louis +Becke, Frank T. Bullen, Morley Roberts, R. B. Cunninghame Graham, +Henry Seton Merriman and Frank Harris, all of whom published their +earliest books during the decade. The old romance found a new and +subtle exponent in Maurice Hewlett, for _The Forest Lovers_ was +issued in 1898, _Little Novels from Italy_ in 1899, and _Richard +Yea and Nay_ in 1900, whilst in such writers as Conan Doyle, who +published _The White Company_ in 1891, _Sherlock Holmes_ in +1892, and _Rodney Stone_ in 1896; Anthony Hope, who published +_The Prisoner of Zenda_ in 1894; Stanley J. Weyman, E. W. Hornung +and Quiller Couch, popular romance found inspired representatives. Even +the romance of powerful and widespread human interest rose again into +distinction with Hall Caine, whose best works, if _The Deemster_, +published in 1887, be excepted, appeared during these extraordinarily +productive years. And the name of Marie Corelli became still further +associated with that species of sensationalism which she had already +made her own. + +So active was the romantic spirit of the period that it did not +scruple about using many mediums for its purpose, hitherto neglected. +Thus ideas both spiritual and intellectual were pressed into its +service, the former finding striking expression in Harold Frederic’s +_Illumination_ (1896), and in the Celtic romances of “Fiona +Macleod”; and the latter in the bookish but always charming romances of +Richard Le Gallienne. Type of his period, Le Gallienne infused into the +old form of the Picaresque romance a great deal of the buoyant gaiety +of the time as it inspired young people to prance about among books, +ideas, conventions and dreams. In _The Book Bills of Narcissus_ +(1891) he has caught this joyous intellectuality in full flight, with +all its hopes and enthusiasms; and later, when he, greatly daring, +ventured into the realm of Laurence Sterne with a new _Sentimental +Journey_, called _The Quest of the Golden Girl_ (1896). The +result was interesting, for with delicate indelicacy he translated the +emotional unrest of the hour into a fancifully impossible romance which +future generations will read for delight or for a truthful, though +not impartial, picture of a certain corner of the age. In 1895 George +du Maurier revived, in _Trilby_, the romance of Bohemianism as +discovered by Henri Murger, and Arthur Machen, in _The Great God +Pan_ (1894), took romance once more into the abode of terror in a +manner as startling as it was elementally true. It is not unnatural to +find that a period so bent on discovering--or rediscovering--romance in +many things and experiences did not overlook the romance of childhood. +This enchanted land had been discovered, as we know, by Lewis Carroll +and Robert Louis Stevenson, but a new realm was explored with happy +results by Kenneth Grahame, who with _The Golden Age_ (1896) and +_Dream Days_ (1898) created a new delight by introducing us into a +delectable kingdom whose existence we had only imagined. + +Last in this long gallery of writers of fiction, but none the less +valued on that account, came the humorists. Although H. D. Traill +was convinced that “The New Humour” turned out to be simply the Old +Buffoonery “writ small,” there was a New Humour which, in the amusing +tales of Jerome K. Jerome, W. W. Jacobs, Israel Zangwill, J. M. +Barrie, Pett Ridge and Barry Pain, was as much a characteristic of +the Nineties as the problem novel. For it certainly made a departure +from tradition, although the laughter it raised was the same as all +laughter--of Eternity rather than of Time. It probably differed from +the old humour in that it was more self-conscious and less capable of +laughing at itself. The New Humour when it was _new_ was perhaps a +little inhuman, and it reached its highest expression not in any of the +works deliberately written with an eye on laughter, but in works like +the plays of Bernard Shaw, which provoked laughter out of more serious +business. + +The novels and stories of the period, however, did not revolutionise so +much as extend established methods. + +It would not be easy to point to another decade in which English +literature produced so many varieties of fiction, possessing the +attractions of novelty or artistic distinction, or both. These works +have at least one thing in common: they all represent more than +ordinary ability within their own spheres. Some of them are now +admitted to the first class of English fiction. And so balanced is +the expression of the majority that they can be said to stand for +many generations rather than for a special period. Few of these works +are peculiar to their period after the manner of much of the poetry +written in the decade. Oscar Wilde’s _Dorian Gray_, Richard Le +Gallienne’s _Quest of the Golden Girl_ and Aubrey Beardsley’s +_Under the Hill_ have each of them characteristics which would +have made their appearance irrelevant before or after the decade in +which they were published, and so, for the same reason, have the +satires upon those authors and their works: _The Green Carnation_, +_The Autobiography of a Boy_ and _The Quest of the Gilt-Edged +Girl_. But for the rest, novelties of thought and utterance are +sufficiently balanced by normal vision to defy many trespassing years +to come. In the main, the best fiction of the decade achieved that +thoughtfulness and that freedom of expression for which the upholders +of the higher drama were still fighting. The native-born realistic play +had yet to come, and its arrival was still a matter of anticipation +and conjecture. But the realistic novel came complete with _Esther +Waters_ and _Jude the Obscure_. + +Nothing essentially English was added to the novel as such. What was +new was the result of outside influence. But in a less popular form of +fiction, the short story, a mastery was achieved hitherto unknown in +this country. So successful a contributor to this class of fiction as +H. G. Wells has referred[7] to the short-story harvest of the Nineties, +in comparison with a later decade, in the following terms: + +“The Nineties was a good and stimulating period for a short-story +writer. Mr Kipling had made his astonishing advent with a series of +little blue-grey books, whose covers opened like window-shutters to +reveal the dusty sun-glare and blazing colours of the East; Mr Barrie +had demonstrated what could be done in a little space through the +panes of his _Window in Thrums_. _The National Observer_ was at the +climax of its career of heroic insistence upon lyrical brevity and a +vivid finish, and Mr Frank Harris was not only printing good short +stories by other people, but writing still better ones himself in the +dignified pages of _The Fortnightly Review_. _Longmans’ Magazine_, +too, represented a _clientèle_ of appreciative short-story readers +that is now scattered. Then came the generous opportunities of _The +Yellow Book_, and _The National Observer_ died only to give birth to +_The New Review_. No short story of the slightest distinction went for +long unrecognised. The sixpenny popular magazines had still to deaden +down the conception of what a short story might be to the imaginative +limitation of the common reader--and a maximum length of six thousand +words. Short stories broke out everywhere. Kipling was writing short +stories; Barrie, Stevenson, Frank Harris; Max Beerbohm wrote at least +one perfect one, _The Happy Hypocrite_; Henry James pursued his +wonderful and inimitable bent; and among other names that occur to me, +like a mixed handful of jewels drawn from a bag, are George Street, +Morley Roberts, George Gissing, Ella D’Arcy, Murray Gilchrist, E. +Nesbit, Stephen Crane, Joseph Conrad, Edwin Pugh, Jerome K. Jerome, +Kenneth Grahame, Arthur Morrison, Marriott Watson, George Moore, Grant +Allen, George Egerton, Henry Harland, Pett Ridge, W. W. Jacobs (who +alone seems inexhaustible).... I do not think the present decade can +produce any parallel to this list, or what is more remarkable, that +the later achievements in this field of any of the survivors from +that time, with the sole exception of Joseph Conrad, can compare with +the work they did before 1900. It seems to me this outburst of short +stories came not only as a phase in literary development, but also as a +phase in the development of the individual writers concerned.” + +In both the novel and the short story the sane tradition of English +fiction by which a delicate balance was maintained between realism and +romance rarely broke down. Even the traditional sentimentalism of the +English novel was maintained for those who continued to desire it. +However, the modernists who were caught in the impulsion towards French +realism soon saw the insufficiency of the most carefully observed +facts unless they were clothed with the stuff of the imagination and +the soul. What happened to George Moore may be taken as symbolical +of the return to romance. In one masterpiece, _Esther Waters_, +he gave us reality with a frankness hitherto unknown in this country. +He wrote a novel in which he revealed the pilgrimage of a human being +as a physical entity. That was very well in its way, especially when +that way was the way of a master. But when he came to write _Evelyn +Innes_ he wrote the epic of a soul’s pilgrimage with all his +experience as a realist ready to his hand. In that novel romanticism +and realism met, co-ordinating much that was tentative and whimsical in +the period in one finished and enduring work of art. + + + + + CHAPTER XVII + + RUDYARD KIPLING + + +In the year 1890 people in this country were beginning to tell each +other about, and to ask each other about, a young Anglo-Indian +storyteller whose works were to be found in a series of pamphlets +published by Messrs A. H. Wheeler & Co., of Allahabad, in “The Indian +Railway Library.” On inquiry also it was discovered that this same +storyteller was the son of an Anglo-Indian official, and that he +himself was engaged in the Indian Civil Service, that he had become the +laureate of Governmental circles, and that his clever verses had been +collected in a volume called _Departmental Ditties_. The demand to know +more about this remarkable young man grew until it was found necessary +to publish his stories in England. + +It was in the year 1890 that the short stories of Rudyard Kipling +became accessible to English readers through the normal channels +of publication. Thus came to us, bringing with them the scent and +heat, the colour and passion of the East in all its splendours and +seductiveness, the now world-famous series of short stories, beginning +with _Plain Tales from the Hills_, in which we were introduced to the +vitriolic Mrs Hawksbee, and _Soldiers Three_, with Privates Stanley +Ortheris, John Learoyd and the immortal Terence Mulvaney. These people +immediately entered into our consciousness, taking their place beside +the great comic figures of fiction, those characters whom we all know +so much better than many people we meet in real life. Of a sudden we +found ourselves enjoying a largess of short stories such as the English +language had not known before. The mere recital of the titles of the +little genius-laden volumes issued during that year recalls artistic +experiences little short of thrilling--_The Story of the Gadsbys_, +_In Black and White_, _Under the Deodars_, _The Phantom ’Rickshaw_, +_Wee Willie Winkie_, _The Courting of Dinah Shadd_ and _The City of +Dreadful Night_. Then came a long story, _The Light that Failed_, and +we realised that this new writer had in him the making of a novelist as +well as a great storyteller; a promise, however, not yet achieved. But +none who read the _Departmental Ditties_ could have foretold a poet, +although the appearance in the Press of occasional verses over the +name of Kipling was beginning to make us realise that very shortly it +would be necessary to consider some of the new author’s metrical work +in the light of poetry; and when, in 1892, a volume called _Barrack +Room Ballads and Other Verses_ made its appearance it was as though a +bombshell had burst among the seats of literary judgment, and, amidst +stimulating shouts of approval, academic criticism was faced with the +necessity of revising its idea of poetry, and ultimately of making room +for a new poet. + +The versatility of Rudyard Kipling did not end there. He proved with +such books as _Many Inventions_ (1893), _The Jungle Book_ (1894), +_The Second Jungle Book_ (1895), _The Seven Seas_ (1896), _Captains +Courageous_ (1897), _The Day’s Work_ (1898), _Stalky & Co._ (1899), and +a novel, _The Naulahka_ (1892), written in conjunction with Wolcott +Balestier, that he could enter into the minds of sailors and schoolboys +and animals, besides giving something very like consciousness to +machines, with as much facility as he could enter into the minds of +soldiers, Hindoos, and the members of Anglo-Indian Society. Nor did his +surprising genius and versatility stop there, for with _Kim_ (1901) +he has given us a prose epic of Indian life, and with the _Just-So +Stories for Little Children_ (1902) he has entered into the wonder +spirit of childhood, just as in _Puck of Pook’s Hill_ (1906), and those +remarkable short stories “The Brushwood Boy,” “They,” and the “Finest +Story in the World,” he has proved that his genius is equally at home +in the realm of fancy and on the borderland of human experience. + + [Illustration: RUDYARD KIPLING + + _By William Nicholson_] + +Everybody felt that a new force in a double sense had come into +literature. It was a new voice, a new accent, in many ways a new +language, and in every way forceful even to creating an atmosphere of +physical violence. Rudyard Kipling was a realist with a difference. +He had no antecedents. The critics found it impossible to locate him, +even when they admitted that he had earned a definite place in the +hierarchy of art. They felt without admitting it, and showed without +intending it, that they were, to use that language of the street +which Kipling turned into literature, up against a new game. There +was over-praise and half-praise, as well as right-down opposition; +in short, all the phenomena of the arrival of undoubted genius. Even +those in the vanguard of the new movement were lost when they came to +consider his work, for as he had no antecedents, so he belonged to no +definite movement, neither did he frequent, even when he came to live +in England, the places where literary men congregate. + +Yet, as we can see now, he was a bigger figure in the vital modernist +movement of the Nineties than many who were fonder of using labels to +define their position. His was a definite expression of the modern +movement towards the revaluation of ideas and life; and, although his +temperament was essentially conservative, his interpretation of what +finally is a traditional view of life was so fresh and personal that +it created the illusion of a revolution. He reasserted the claims of +virility and actuality, and, if you like, of vulgarity--that underlying +grossness of life which is Nature’s safeguard. In that respect Kipling +might well be considered a realist. But his realism never, as in the +case of the French realists, looked upon mere frankness as an end in +itself. He was never a realist for realism’s sake: he faced facts only +because he recognised in them the essentials of romance. When he told +a story it was not the outcome of any notion about being an artist, it +was the outcome of the oldest of literary traditions, the desire of +one man to tell another what he has seen, heard or experienced, and to +tell it in the most effective way. His stories, therefore, read like +the verbatim reports of the achievements of a gifted raconteur in club +or smoking-room, or any other place where men swap yarns; and these +stories are equally masculine. They bring the modern clubroom into +literature. + +His poems sing the song of ordinary healthy manhood in much the same +way as folk-songs sang the life of the folk, or, better, as soldier +songs, student songs or sailor chanties tell the desires, whims and +gossip of men who are thrown together by common circumstances. You +feel all the while that the love of the masculine life which is the +keynote of _The Light That Failed_ is the underlying and impelling +influence of Kipling’s attitude. Whilst Bernard Shaw was using Ibsen +to decry the fixed ideals of “the manly man” and “the womanly woman,” +Rudyard Kipling was interpreting a new vision of the manly man in some +of the most masculine poems that have ever been written, wherein every +reference to woman bears the stamp of the oldest attitude of manliness +towards womanliness. And in this respect Kipling was nearer the most +modern philosophy of the time, that of Nietzsche, than Bernard Shaw. +He was no believer in the equality of the sexes; on the contrary, the +pugnacious philosophy of Kipling, with its insistence upon clean health +and a courageous and dangerous life would make men more like men and +women more like women. + +Rudyard Kipling was undeniably a protest also against the artistic +intellectualism of the time, with its tendency to enclose life in the +conservatory of culture; and he was all the more effective as he used +his protagonists’ favourite weapons. He knew what he thought and said +what he thought in his own way, with as little apology to precedent or +convention as the most ultra-realist or impressionist. Everything he +did was impressionist, and like all the great figures of his period +he did not scruple, when occasion served, to use art as a means of +teaching or preaching. He used his art to preach a new imperialistic +patriotism as deliberately as Bernard Shaw used art to preach +socialism, or John Davidson that gospel of philosophic science to which +he devoted his last energies. + +As an artist, then, Kipling won his spurs at the outset by writing a +cycle of short stories unsurpassed in our literature, and finding +their only parallel for bulk of output and high achievement in +the stories of Guy de Maupassant. But he differs from the French +storyteller in that sex plays only a secondary part in his work. In a +period whose artists were over-engaged with the aspects and problems +of sex, it was a virtue to show that life had other interests than the +way of a man with a maid; and it was no small achievement at such a +time to be able to write stories on other subjects which should prove +both stimulating and interesting. It was not as though Rudyard Kipling +were not conscious of the problem of sex; he knew all about it, but +he did not treat it as a problem, he recognised it as a mystery: an +inspiration--and a warning. And into the poem called “The Vampire” he +put his idea of the tragedy of sexual abandonment: + + “A fool there was and he made his prayer + (Even as you and I!) + To a rag and a bone and a hank of hair + (We called her the woman who did not care) + But the fool he called her his lady fair-- + (Even as you and I!)” + +And one cannot help feeling that Rudyard Kipling has finally stated, +through the medium of one of his own soldiers, the average, and perhaps +eternal, view of the sex problem, with all its cheerful fatalism, in +“The Ladies”: + + “I’ve taken my fun where I’ve found it, + An’ now I must pay for my fun, + For the more you ’ave known o’ the others + The less you will settle to one; + An’ the end of it’s settin’ and thinkin’ + An’ dreamin’ Hell-fires to see; + So be warned by my lot (which I know you will not) + An’ learn about women from me.” + +With the concluding dictum that-- + + “... the Colonel’s Lady an’ Judy O’Grady + Are sisters under their skins!” + +It was one of Kipling’s chief distinctions to have been able to see +and feel romance without the aid of antiquity. He had no patience +with antiquarian romanticism, and he satirised those who upheld the +old against the new in “The King,” giving the laments of Cave-men and +Lake-folk at the changes which were killing romance in their times, of +the soldier who saw the death of romance in the substitution of the gun +for the sword, and of the sailor who saw romance again disappearing +when steam took the place of sails; and he brings us down to our +own times with the modern season ticket-holder repining for the old +romantic days of the stage coach, when-- + + “... all unseen + Romance brought up the nine-fifteen. + His hand was on the lever laid, + His oil-can soothed the worrying cranks, + His whistle waked the snowbound grade, + His foghorn cut the reeking banks; + By dock and deep and mine and mill + The Boy-god reckless laboured still!” + +And this idea of romance he wove into all his finest work. He took +things as he found them, the men who worked at manly crafts like +soldiering and sailoring and engine-driving and, later, aviation, and +showed us how fearful and wonderful were their days, turning what had +hitherto been considered a humdrum modern world into an Arabian Night’s +Entertainment. In many a tale he has made machinery speak as eloquently +as Tommy Atkins or Mowgli, or Toomai of the Elephants. He has taken +us out on to the banks of Newfoundland and shown us the hardness and +joyousness of the cod fisheries and the way they have in the making of +a man. And in the Jungle Books he has taken us into the wild, and woven +a spell of romance more fascinating than the romantic life of men, and +more natural than natural history. When he goes among the machines one +feels that he loves them as his own “Stiff-necked, Glasgow beggar,” the +engineer M’Andrews, loved them, and that the reply of the engineer to +the passenger who had asked him, “Don’t you think steam spoils romance +at sea?” would be Kipling’s own reply in the same circumstances, to +those who failed to see the romance of the modern world: + + “Darned ijit! I’d been doon that morn’ to see what ailed the + throws, + Manholin’, on my back--the cranks three inches off my nose. + Romance! Those first-class passengers they like it very well, + Printed an’ bound in little books; but why don’t poets tell? + I’m sick of all their quirks an’ turns--the loves an’ doves they + dream. + Lord, send a man like Robbie Burns to sing the Song o’ Steam!” + +Rudyard Kipling did not wait, as we have seen, for someone else to +fulfil this demand of his own creating. He stepped into the breach +himself, and if not exactly as a new Burns singing the song of steam, +as one who had vision enough to express that vision in a language +strong to compel the attention of his fellow-men. + +Kipling was far from inclined to rest after discovering nought common +on the earth. He wanted to share this discovery with his fellow-men; +and he wanted his compatriots to realise their obligations to an +Empire which embraced so much of the good earth. Before him our poets +were insular; they had no consciousness of Empire, or when they had +they associated the Empire with England. Kipling took the opposite +attitude--he associated England with the Empire. “What do they know +of England who only England know?” he asked. And his question came at +a moment when circumstances had made a hitherto indifferent people +acutely conscious of the world-circling colonies their race had +founded. At the Jubilee of 1887 they had been told that Queen Victoria +reigned over an Empire upon which the sun never set. The image had +filled the popular imagination. Gladstone’s failure to settle the +Soudan, and his more recent attempt to give Ireland Home Rule, thus +creating an illusion of Imperial dismemberment, had each contributed +to the larger patriotism of Empire. So when Kitchener “avenged” the +death of Gordon, and obliterated the failures of Wolseley in Egypt, +by defeating the Mahdi at Omdurman, and retaking Khartoum, slumbering +Imperialism awoke with a strange and arrogant light in its eyes. + +The spark which eventually set the country ablaze with warlike +patriotism was the Outlander question in the Transvaal, following the +gold boom and the discovery of diamonds in South Africa. The great +force in Cape Colony was Cecil Rhodes; he had gone there in the early +Seventies as a young man, consolidated the diamond interests in the De +Beers Company, worked at the early organisation of the gold industry, +settled the native unrest in Matabeleland, Bechuanaland, Basutoland and +Mashonaland, brought about unity of purpose between British and Dutch +in the south, and founded the British South Africa Company, which was +granted a royal charter in 1889, and whose vast realm is now known +as Rhodesia. Rhodes was a man of action and a dreamer, a practical +visionary, and from his early days in the colony he dreamt of a United +South Africa, with railway and telegraphic communication from the +Cape to Cairo. In 1890 he became Prime Minister of Cape Colony, and +the events which followed this appointment were the final causes of +that new patriotism of which Rudyard Kipling became the bard. Rhodes +had been hampered in his schemes in the north by the national and +non-progressive policy of Paul Kruger, President of the South African +Republic, and Cape Town politics eventually centred around the question +of the enfranchisement of British settlers in the Transvaal. Rhodes +found a sympathetic supporter of his ideals in this country in Joseph +Chamberlain, who had joined the Marquess of Salisbury’s ministry as +Secretary of State for Colonial Affairs in 1895. Weary of political +negotiations, the residents of Johannesburg were becoming restive, +and they began arming themselves against Boer rule; and a climax was +reached when, acting upon this knowledge, on the 29th December in the +same year, Dr Jameson, the Administrator of Mashonaland, invaded the +Transvaal with a small body of troops. He was defeated and captured, +but the romantic side of the Jameson Raid appealed to popular sentiment +and the new romance became the new patriotism. The sequel to the Raid +was the Boer War (1899–1902), and the realisation of Cecil Rhodes’ +dream of a United South Africa under the British flag. + +Never before had this country been mixed up in a great issue which +combined so inextricably the most sordid and the most exalted +motives. Violent partisanship rent asunder the British people, and +the pro-Boer campaign led by Lloyd George ended in riots. Cecil +Rhodes became an ogre in the eyes of the Peace Party, whose members +also looked upon Joseph Chamberlain as the political instrument of +the ring of cosmopolitan financiers who controlled the South African +mining industry. Even now it is impossible to separate finance from +patriotism in that fierce struggle. Two things, however, seem certain: +firstly, that Cecil Rhodes was not wholly inspired by sordid motives, +and that he used his own wealth as much as he used the Rand financiers +and British politicians, as instruments towards the realisation of +an Imperial idea; and secondly, that Rudyard Kipling as prophet and +bard of Empire was high above all pettiness, and inspired by a genuine +romantic passion far removed from that jingoism which did nothing but +add the verb “to maffick” to our language. + +It was easier to mistake the gospel of Kipling, and the crowd did +mistake it, because his most popular songs were set to a banjo melody. +Before him bardic prophets had been content with the lyre; but with +fine insolence he rejected that ancient instrument, and sought to +inspire the most commonplace of all musical instruments with an exalted +message. He saw in the banjo “the war-drum of the white man round the +world.” But not all those who heard and liked his tunes realised their +underlying demand upon character. They mistook his patriotism for +jingoism, and he was forced to pray, + + “Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet-- + Lest we forget--lest we forget!” + +They waved flags when he sang of Empire--but showed more inclination +for cricket and football than for fighting or empire-building: and the +banjo snapped out its derision of “the flannelled fools at the wicket” +and “the muddied oafs at the goal”-- + + “Given to strong delusion, wholly believing a lie, + Ye saw that the land lay fenceless, and ye let the months go by + Waiting some easy wonder: hoping some saving sign-- + Idle--openly idle--in the lee of the forespent Line. + Idle--except for your boasting--and what is your boasting worth + If ye grudge a year of service to the lordliest life on earth?” + +Obviously Kipling and the man-in-the-street, who began to become +a specially designated quantity at about this time, were at +cross-purposes. There was an austerity about his demand which did not +appeal to what he called “a poor little street-bred people.” Perhaps +his song was a little foreign--as the Empire was a little foreign; and +the masses were hardly prepared for his fierce Old Testament faith in +a God of Battles and of Hosts. The people had his confident faith in +their race. The Jews in Egypt were not more confident that they were +the Chosen People. But our democracy did not want to prove their title; +they were quite content to let others prove it for them or to take it +on faith. Kipling narrowed down the Imperial idea to ancient tribal +proportions plus conscription and the modern ideal of efficiency in +organisation: + + “Keep ye the Law--be swift in all obedience-- + Clear the land of evil, drive the road and bridge the ford. + Make ye sure to each his own + That he reap where he hath sown; + By the peace among Our peoples let men know we serve the Lord!” + +With this love of a modern and masterful people he associated the +traditions of the race and its achievements in science and discovery +and adventure; and particularly in that restlessness which had pitted +the English against nature and barbarism in the ends of the earth: +“there’s never a wave of all her waves but marks our English dead,” he +sang. Not alone of successful enterprise of soldier or sailor does he +sing; but he is fully conscious of the pioneer who makes tracks into +the unknown without reward, favour or success; the + + “... legion that never was ’listed, + That carries no colour or crest, + But split in a thousand detachments, + Is breaking the way for the rest.” + +And his romanticism naturally takes under its wing the spirit of youth +in its hunger for life; he loves all who respond to the call of the +Red Gods and who dare to test their naked souls against the rough +uncivilised world: + + “Who hath smelt wood-smoke at twilight? Who hath heard the + birch-log burning? + Who is quick to read the noises of the night? + Let him follow with the others, for the Young Men’s feet are + turning + To the camps of proved desire and known delight!” + +Rudyard Kipling’s song, whatever its immediate subject, is always the +song of intrepid man. It is the revolt against book-culture and a fresh +demand for the old culture of experience. He was not always rude in +thought or form, and proved his power as a more conventional poet in +“Sussex,” “The Flowers,” and in the most orthodox of all his poems he +has come even nearer academic poetry in the expression of his own idea +of human, and his own, worthiness: + + “One stone the more swings to her place + In that dread Temple of Thy Worth-- + It is enough that through Thy grace + I saw nought common on Thy earth. + + Take not that vision from my ken; + Oh, whatsoe’er may spoil or speed, + Help me to need no aid from men + That I may help such men as need.” + +And it is only natural also that the poem in his own manner which rises +nearest to what we have come to regard as poetry is the “L’Envoi” to +the _Barrack Room Ballads_, in which he sings of the return to the +trail of “proved desire and known delight.” But there is little doubt +that Kipling’s most original and inevitable verse is to be found in +his soldier songs. These chanties of military life are unique, and in +them he has transcended the art of effective dialect verse by turning +slang into poetry. Such ballads as “Fuzzy-Wuzzy” and “Mandalay” are as +peculiar in their way, and as separate from the rest of English poetry, +as the designs of Aubrey Beardsley are separate things in English +pictorial art. + +Another class of verse Kipling also made his own: those verses into +which he has put his more personal views upon questions of art and +conduct. But in these, as well as in some of his more recent patriotic +songs, although he has succeeded in achieving eloquent and vigorous +expression, with, in addition, that piquancy which is peculiar to all +his work, he has strayed furthest from the path of poetry. Sometimes he +has fallen into verses which are incredibly lacking even in the most +ordinary characteristics of poetry; and whatever one may find in such +compositions as “The Conundrum of the Workshops,” “In the Neolithic +Age,” “Cleared,” or “Tomlinson,” one only finds poetry by accident, as +one finds it in prose. Still, among these are works which are their own +reward, and in some of them their author has defended himself and his +method of contravening the customs of polite art: + + “Here’s my wisdom for your use, as I learned it where the moose + And the reindeer roared where Paris roars to-night:-- + There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays, + And--every--single--one--of--them--is--right.” + +There is perhaps more in this sweeping assertion than art disputants +will be ready to admit. However, the selective processes of time would +seem to be on the side of Kipling, who has added another admission +in justification of his methods in a familiar set of quaint verses +introducing the second series of _Barrack Room Ballads_ in “The +Seven Seas”: + + “When ’Omer smote ’is bloomin’ lyre, + He’d ’eard men sing by land an’ sea; + An’ what he thought ’e might require, + ’E went and took--the same as me!” + +Rudyard Kipling has helped himself variedly at the tables of art +and life, and it is not surprising, therefore, that he has produced +unusual results. But strip from his output every weed, every unworthy +production, and there will remain not one masterpiece, but a dozen, +and in most branches of literature--novel, short story, ballad, lyric, +dialogue and descriptive essay. And if his teaching at times seemed +unnecessarily blatant it possessed an undercurrent of courageous wisdom +as far removed from blatant jingoism as jingoism is from the Imperial +or patriotic idea. Wonder was reborn in him; but it was not the wonder +of childhood. It was the wonder of the grown man who had known and +observed life and become illusion-proof--but wondered still and was +thankful always: + + “For to admire an’ for to see, + For to be’old this world so wide-- + It never done no good to me, + But I can’t drop it if I tried!” + +He can forgive all faults of passion or ambition; but he has no +place in his system for the characterless nonentity who is neither +good for something nor bad for anything. He has revealed the type in +“Tomlinson,” and name and man have entered into our conception of +life. This poet and visionary, who has helped by his song to weld +a world-ring of colonies into an Empire, came into the Nineties +telling people to have done with the gods of printed books and life +by proxy--in short, to have done with anything in the nature of that +Tomlinson who was not good enough for Heaven or bad enough for Hell, +and who was finally rejected by the devil and sent back to earth with +the admonition: + + “Go back to Earth with a lip unsealed--go back with an open eye, + And carry my word to the Sons of Men or ever ye come to die: + That the sin they do by two and two they must pay for one by one-- + And ... the God that you took from a printed book be with you, + Tomlinson!” + + + + + CHAPTER XVIII + + ART AND LIFE + + +In an earlier chapter I have pointed out that the art movements of +the period took in the main two more or less diverse paths, paths +which may be differentiated as the scientific and the traditional. +The first aimed at reality of statement based upon close observation +of life, the second depended upon the recapture of past tendencies +in art and their definite association with the life of the day. The +former was an exotic growth, having its antecedents in the work of the +French Impressionists in painting, and the Realists and Symbolists in +literature. The second was native, going back to the Middle Ages when +art was definitely allied with utility. The former had for its outcome +the development of the Fine Arts, and the latter that of what are known +as the Applied Arts. In the preceding decade the Applied Art movement +had the misfortune of becoming implicated in the æsthetic propaganda +of Oscar Wilde, and although its underlying principles were as sound +then as they are now, it suffered in repute when accumulated ridicule +finally drove out the æsthetes. The movement sprang directly from the +teaching of John Ruskin and it received considerable impetus from +the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. It is doubtful, however, whether the +enthusiasm of a group of artists and enthusiasts for good craftsmanship +would have developed into anything approaching the proportions of a +national movement had it not been for the practical genius of William +Morris. He gave a fresh turn to the teaching of Ruskin, demonstrating +in things real what was at the time little more than a pious opinion in +peril of being lost in the rhetoric of an impressive prose. + + [Illustration: ·A·GARLAND·FOR·MAY·DAY·1895· + + ·DEDICATED·TO·THE·WORKERS·BY·WALTER·CRANE·] + +For years a battle had been fought between the Impressionists and +the Traditionalists, and the long series of wordy engagements had +culminated in the Law Courts when Whistler brought his famous action +against Ruskin. The result was a Pyrrhic victory for Whistler. This +did little more than throw the contending parties into more definitely +hostile camps without giving any hope of ultimate peace. William +Morris, naturally on the side of Ruskin, did not make Ruskin’s mistake +of under-estimating or decrying the realistic movement. Being a +craftsman himself, and knowing good craftsmanship when he saw it, he +realised that the Impressionists were sincere artists, equally with +himself; though, from his point of view, wrong-headed; and, after +granting so much, he was content with stating his differences. “Now +it seems to me,” he said, in the preface to _Arts and Crafts Essays_ +(1893), “that this impulse in men of certain minds and moods towards +certain forms of art, this genuine eclecticism, is all that we can +expect under modern civilisation; that we can expect no _general_ +impulse towards the fine arts till civilisation has been transformed +into some other condition of life, the details of which we cannot +foresee. Let us then make the best of it, and admit that those who +practise art must nowadays be conscious of that practice; conscious I +mean that they are either adding a certain amount of artistic beauty +and interest to a piece of goods which would, if produced in the +ordinary way, have no beauty or artistic interest, or that they are +producing something which has no other reason for existence than its +beauty and artistic interest. But having made the admission let us +accept the consequence of it, and understand that it is our business as +artists, since we desire to produce works of art, to supply the lack of +tradition by diligently cultivating in ourselves the sense of beauty +(_pace_ the Impressionists), skill of hand and niceness of observation, +without which only a _makeshift_ of art can be got; and also, so far as +we can, to call the attention of the public to the fact that there are +a few persons who are doing this, and even earning a livelihood by so +doing, and that therefore, in spite of the destructive tradition of our +immediate past, in spite of the great revolution in the production of +wares, which this century only has seen on the road to completion, and +which on the face of it, and perhaps essentially, is hostile to art, +in spite of all difficulties which the evolution of the later days of +society has thrown in the way of that side of human pleasure which is +called art, there is still a minority with a good deal of life in it +which is not content with what is called utilitarianism, which, being +interpreted, means the reckless waste of life in the pursuit of the +means of life.” Morris himself endeavoured to put his theories into +practice in a variety of ways, and finally by the control of his own +workshops at Merton Abbey and the sale of his goods at the historic +shop in Oxford Street. + +The idea of bringing together art and craft possessed Morris throughout +his life, but it is a curious fact in the history of the Arts and +Crafts movement that he neither initiated the idea of the handicraft +workshop, of which he became proprietor, nor the Arts and Crafts +Society, of which he became chief figure. The former was suggested in +the first instance by Ford Madox Brown, and the latter was a chance +result of an abortive revolt on the part of a number of young artists, +chiefly members of the new English Art Club, against the methods of +the Hanging Committee of the Royal Academy Exhibition. This rising +occurred in 1886, and, upon its proving ineffective, the craftsmen and +decorative artists who had thrown in their lot with the revolutionaries +were led by Walter Crane into a new camp, which two years later became +the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society. This was the first organisation +to give general publicity to the aims of a movement which had received +the benediction of the craftsmen who founded the Art Workers’ Guild in +1884. William Morris was one of the earliest members of the Guild, and +he eventually became a Guild Master. No one denies the supremacy of his +influence in the handicrafts movement; just as he never denied, in fact +was always ready to admit, the influence of Ruskin on his own work and +ideas. In 1892 he wrote a preface to a popular reprint of the chapter +from _The Stones of Venice_, called “The Nature of Gothic,” in the +course of which he said that he believed that chapter to be one of the +most important things written by Ruskin, and that in future days it +would be considered “as one of the very few necessary and inevitable +utterances of the century.” And in the same preface he upheld Ruskin’s +teaching that art was the expression of man’s joy in his work, and +laid it down as a fervent conviction that “the hallowing of labour by +art” was the one aim for artists and craftsmen of the time. More than +any other man of his day he lived for that purpose and devoted to it +an energy and a variety of gifts without equal since the days of the +Italian Renaissance. + +In the Eighteen Nineties there were those, even as there are to-day, +who persisted in looking upon this unique craftsman as a poet and +_belles lettrist_, and upon his craftsmanship and his Socialism +as the whims of an otherwise responsible genius. The writing of poetry +was, of course, one of the many arts in which he was a master. Yet he +never placed himself on a poetical pedestal, and he had no high opinion +of those who made poetry the sole business of a lifetime. Poetry was +only one of the many incidents in his extraordinarily varied career. +He not only practised many crafts, but so wide was his vision, and so +tremendous his store of energy, that he would practise several crafts, +including the writing of poetry, literally at one and the same time. +Those who worked with him remember how he could work at a design, a +poem, an essay and a piece of tapestry, and produce good work in each +during, say, the course of a single morning. First he might be working +at his loom, and all the while he would be mumbling to himself, and +humming aloud as if he were trying a tune over in his head and testing +it by sound; then he would jump up from the loom, sit down at a table, +and scribble very rapidly the verse of a poem; immediately afterwards +he would add something to the manuscript of an essay that would +probably be delivered as a lecture, returning anon to his loom to throw +the shuttle for a while, before taking up an unfinished design for +printed fabrics, stained glass or book decoration. + +In the midst of this apparently scattered activity Morris not only +finished a great amount of work, but he knew precisely what he was +doing and had constantly before his mind the ideal towards which he +aimed. “The aim of art,” he said, “is to increase the happiness of men +by giving them beauty and interest in incident to amuse their leisure, +and prevent their wearying even of rest, and by giving them hope and +bodily pleasure in their work; or, shortly, to make man’s work happy +and his rest fruitful.” He himself rested only when he went to bed. +Somebody once criticised the discomfort of a chair he had designed, and +the reply of William Morris was: “If you want to be comfortable, go to +bed.” That explains the man. He loved his work; every expression of +energy in the whole of that busy life was an expression of joy. He knew +that what he was doing was art, but he made no more fuss about it than +he fussed about his poetry; because he knew also that what he was doing +was useful work. + +William Morris had the imagination to see life in the form of design +and the skill to express this sense of design in the materials of +his art. That is the keynote of his genius and of his teaching. You +can best understand his poetry, his romances, his stained glass and +tapestries and chintzes, the books of the Kelmscott Press, as well as +his Socialism, by an appeal to design--not an appeal merely to the +technical relationship of lines and spaces and colours in patterns, +or of rhymes and rhythms in a poem, but design as the relationship of +idea and action, the relationship of art and purpose. William Morris +always had at the back of his mind the dream of a Perfect State. Always +busy in the visible world, he was still busier in the Utopia of his +fancy. The beautiful things he made were imported to this world from +that Utopia, and their very importation was an act of propaganda. They +were the real _News from Nowhere_. And he did not bring them here +to make lovers of the fine arts content with modern civilisation; he +brought them here deliberately to lure the people of his day from their +ugly surroundings into the better land of his dreams. Everything he +created was a lure to Utopia, an invitation to follow him into a new +world. + +He remarked once in a lecture: “I must remind you, though I, and +better men than I, have said it over and over again, that once every +man that made anything made it a work of art besides a useful piece of +goods, whereas now only a very few things have even the most distant +claims to be considered works of art. I beg you to consider that most +carefully and seriously, and to try to think what it means. But first, +lest any of you doubt it, let me ask you what forms the great mass of +the objects that fill our museums, setting aside positive lectures and +sculpture? Is it not just the common household goods that pass time? +True it is that some people may look upon them simply as curiosities, +but you and I have been taught most properly to look upon them as +priceless treasures that can teach us all sorts of things, and yet, I +repeat, they are for the most part common household goods wrought by +common fellows, as people say now, without any cultivation, men who +thought the sun went round the earth and that Jerusalem was exactly in +the middle of the world.” William Morris was not defending museums, +he was advocating conditions that would make it possible for the +common people of to-day to create after their own manner beautiful, +useful things, just as the common people of other times created such +things after their manner. Such treasures were for him incentives to +good artistic conduct, which for him again was nothing less than good +citizenship. + +Good craftsmanship as understood by William Morris and his +fellow-craftsmen, although they talked much of beauty, was in the main +a demand for quality in material, execution and taste allied with the +idea of a change in social life, as without that these three things +would be impossible. The main tendency of the handicraft revival was +therefore social when it was not actually Socialist. It was rarely +individual and private after the manner of the old fine arts and the +new. “The decline of art,” wrote Walter Crane, “corresponds with its +conversion into portable forms of private property, or material or +commercial speculation. Its aims under such conditions become entirely +different. All really great works of art are public works--monumental, +collective, generic--expressing the ideas of a race, a community, a +united people; not the ideas of a class.” It was inevitable that +the ideas of John Ruskin should have been exploited to the full in +a movement which sought thus to bring about the communalisation of +art. But these ideas were not the only influence. The prose works of +Richard Wagner were printed during the decade, and his doctrine of +a folk-art had a sure though less definite effect in many quarters, +more especially among those who, with Mary Neal, revived the almost +lost art of folk-dance and singing games which became so important a +feature of the Esperance Girls’ Club and Social Settlement, founded +by her with Emmeline Pethick Lawrence in 1895. At the same time +the folk-art revival was being strengthened by the researches into +folk-song of Broadwood, Baring-Gould, Frank Kidson and Cecil Sharp. +The appearance also of Aylmer Maude’s translation of Tolstoy’s _What +is Art?_ in 1899 aroused heated discussions and a wide interest +among art reformers. All prominent craftsmen agreed with the Wagnerian +conception of the artistic as distinct from the financial community, +and they looked forward to the time when, in Wagner’s own words, +“art ... would become the herald and standard of all future communal +institutions.” And it was easy for those who held this faith to +sympathise with Tolstoy’s onslaught upon decadence, and to accept the +Tolstoyan pronouncement that, “Art is not, as the meta-physicians say, +the manifestation of some mysterious Idea of beauty, or God; it is not, +as the æsthetical physiologists say, a game in which man lets off his +excess of stored-up energy; it is not the expression of man’s emotions +by external signs; it is not the production of pleasing objects; and, +above all, it is not pleasure; but it is a means of union among men, +joining them together in the same feeling, and indispensable for the +life and progress towards well-being of individuals and of humanity.” +It will be seen, then, that the two paths of the modern art movement +resolved themselves into two very definite and very different aims: the +communal and the individual, the public and the private. + +But whatever theories about art dominated the intelligence of the +members of the Arts and Crafts movement, one thing is certain, their +activities produced a notable effect upon taste in all matters relating +to architecture and the decorative and useful arts, and permeated +more particularly the taste of the middle classes in Great Britain, +spreading from them to Europe and America. To a large extent propaganda +was carried on by example rather than by precept, and this was made +possible by the existence of so many craftsmen of ability and repute. +William Morris himself might have made any movement by his capacity +for mastering whatever art or craft appealed to him, and he was known +throughout the world for his skill as a designer, weaver, dyer and +printer. But all branches of craftsmanship had their masters. These +included Walter Crane, designer, painter and illustrator; Emery Walker, +printer; T. J. Cobden-Sanderson, and his pupil, Douglas Cockerell, +bookbinders; William de Morgan, tilemaker; May Morris, embroiderer; +Henry Wilson, W. A. S. Benson and Edmund Spencer, metal-workers; +Stephen Webb, wood-carver; and, perhaps most important of all, the +group of architects led by Norman Shaw, and including T. G. Jackson, +Reginald Blomfield, W. R. Lethaby, G. F. Bodley, Basil Champneys, +Bailey Scott and C. F. A. Voysey, who together revolutionised our ideas +of domestic, and opened the way to a new era in public, architecture. +Many of these art workers were recognised masters in the preceding +decade, and one or two even before that, but it remained for the +Nineties to give their work a wider and more general acceptance. + +The outward effect of this search for excellence of quality and utility +in art was, however, not so profound as it might have been. This is +explained by the fact that the conditions under which Morris and his +group worked were so far removed from the conditions of the average +economic and industrial life of the time as to appear impractical for +general adoption. They demonstrated, it is true, that it was possible +to produce useful articles of fine quality and good taste even in an +age of debased industry, and scamped and counterfeit workmanship; but +their demonstration proved also that unless something like a revolution +happened among wageearners none but those of ample worldly means could +hope to become possessed of the results of such craftsmanship. The +Arts and Crafts movement was thus checked in its most highly organised +and enthusiastic period by the habit and necessity of cheapness. It +was found possible to educate taste, for even modern commerce had not +succeeded in killing the fundamental love of excellence in commodities, +but as quickly as taste was improved by exhibitions of modern +craftsmanship, commerce stepped in supplying those who could not afford +the necessarily expensive results with cheap imitations. The ogre of +shoddy stood across the path of quality, and many who were set upon +the high trail of excellence by the Arts and Crafts movement ended as +devotees of fumed oak furniture, and what began as a great movement was +in danger of ending as an empty fashion with the word “artistic” for +shibboleth. + +Such negative results did not imply complete failure. The Arts and +Crafts movement never expected immediate victory, far less would it +have been capable of the illusion that passing fashion and victory +were one and the same thing. They were doing pioneer work, propaganda +by demonstration, and even if all craftsmen were not convinced of the +impossibility of making such work the rule rather than the exception +in a commercial community, they learnt their lesson very soon, and +readily admitted and advocated some other than the prevailing financial +standard of production. Still, the work of the craftsmen named +represents so high an achievement that we have to go back many years +before we can find anything in this country to equal it, and although +the Arts and Crafts as an organised movement is not so apparent to-day, +the tradition of good craftsmanship has been recaptured and its +upholders will not readily let it be lost again. + +To have accomplished so much is no little achievement, but perhaps +a more important contribution to the vitality of the period was the +recognition and the interpretation of the organic relationship between +the separate arts and architecture and between architecture and the +building of towns. The immediate function of art as understood by +the Arts and Crafts movement was stated by T. J. Cobden-Sanderson in +a lecture at the Arts and Crafts Exhibition in 1896 as the power of +doing things in the spirit of an artist and in reference to the whole +of life. “Art implies a certain lofty environment,” he said, “and is +itself an adjustment to that environment, of all that can be done by +mankind within it. Art as a great function of human imagination is not +the creation of isolated objects of beauty, though isolated objects of +beauty may indeed be created by Art, and in themselves resume all that +is beautiful, orderly, restful and stable in the artist’s conception of +that environment. Still less is it, what some may seem to imagine, the +objects of beauty themselves. It is something--it is _much_--more. +Art is, or should be, alive, alive and a universal stimulus. It is that +spirit of order and seemliness, of dignity and sublimity, which, acting +in unison with the great perception of natural forces in their own +orderly evolution, tends to make out of the chaos of egotistic passions +a great power of disinterested social action.” And in a lecture on +“Beautiful Cities,” delivered at the same exhibition, W. R. Lethaby +took the idea further and gave it a more practical turn: “Art is not +the pride of the eye and the purse, it is a link with the child-spirit +and the child-ages of the world. The Greek drama grew up out of the +village dance; the Greek theatre was developed from the stone-paved +circles where the dances took place. If we gather the children who now +dance at the street corners into some better dancing-ground, might +we not hope for a new music, a new drama, and a new architecture? +Unless there is a ground of beauty, vain it is to expect the fruit of +beauty. Failing the spirit of Art, it is futile to attempt to leaven +this huge mass of ‘man styes’ by erecting specimens of architect’s +architecture, and dumping down statues of people in cocked hats. We +should begin on the humblest plane by sweeping the streets better, +washing and whitewashing the houses, and taking care that such railings +and lamp-posts as are required are good lamp-posts and railings, the +work of the best artists attainable.” By linking up art with the city +and with common things the Arts and Crafts movement completed the +sequence of its ideas, and if it has not as yet succeeded in creating a +new Jerusalem, it has indicated a way by pointing out the path for the +Town Planning activities of a later date. Many craftsmen-visionaries +saw afar off the Promised Land. William Morris set his own vision down +in the magical prose of _News from Nowhere_ (1891), and there is +little doubt that his vision and their craftsmanship helped the ideas +of Ebenezer Howard as expressed in _Garden Cities of To-morrow_ to +such practical manifestations as they have received at Letchworth and +Golders Green. + +The weakness of the Arts and Crafts movement was a weakness of +circumstance rather than ability. Its members did pioneer work, and +one of the first tasks was to step back into the past towards fine +standards and sound traditions of workmanship before stepping forward +into the future with their records and examples, or even, indeed, +lauding them in the present. Thus their work, excellent though it is, +looks and is archaic. The best craftsmanship of the Eighteen Nineties +was outmoded at birth--“born out of its due time.” It was sound in +workmanship, excellent in design; at its best, beautiful; but in the +main it was ’prentice work, a lesson rather than an achievement. It +bore the stigmata of unrest and yearning instead of the easy gladness +of confident and inevitable expression which was at once true to its +moment and fit for its purpose. + + + + + CHAPTER XIX + + THE REVIVAL OF PRINTING + + +The revival of the art of printing began when Messrs Charles +Whittingham revived Caslon’s famous founts at the Chiswick Press +in 1844. The first volume of the revival was the _Diary of Lady +Willoughby_, printed for Messrs Longmans. Before that date, and +for a period covering something like a century and a half, a process +of degeneration had been at work in the craft of bookmaking, which, +towards the close of the eighteenth century, had reached a degree of +positive ugliness as supreme in its own way as the positive beauty +of the books by the great presses of the past. This is all the more +remarkable when it is remembered that the materials with which the +revival was begun existed so far back as the year 1720, when Caslon set +up his type foundry in London and commenced casting those “old-faced” +alphabets which had been drawn from the seventeenth-century Elzevirs +and Plantins. + +But although the revival of printing began so far back as 1844 with +the work of the Chiswick Press, the revival of the personal note in +printing did not come about until a half-century later, when, during +the Eighteen Nineties, suddenly, with few obvious preliminaries, we +found ourselves in the midst of the Golden Age of what may be termed +subjective printing. The revival appeared to be extemporaneous, but, +like all such occurrences, it was founded on a succession of real if +imperceptible circumstances, not least of which were the existence +of ugliness and lack of individuality which sooner or later will, in +any age in which it occurs, provoke the finer and more impressionable +minds to protest. The protest in this instance took, in the productions +of the Vale, Kelmscott, Eragny, Essex House, and Doves presses, a +creative and positive form, as natural as the foliation and fruition +of plants. The tastes of such men as William Morris, Emery Walker and +Charles Ricketts were revolted at the vulgar, tawdry and expressionless +books of the time and, being masters of practical imagination, their +protest was creative. They wanted beautiful books, and instead of +grumbling with what existed, they set to work and made what they could +not buy. They were moved again by that vital form of atavism which, +by throwing back to an earlier period, picks up the dropped thread of +tradition, and so continues the process of evolution; their protest +therefore became, in the best sense of the word, a revolution: a +turning round to the period when craftsmanship, imagination and life +were one and indivisible. + +In the making of books the first and most essential demand is for +legibility. The printing must be readable. To this end must type be +fashioned and page built. Charles Ricketts, with those two other +masters of the revival of great printing, William Morris and Emery +Walker, realised this need, and in their founts they aimed at clarity +and utility combined with personal expression. The commercial tradition +of the oblong letter, with its false utility, was abandoned, and the +dignity of the square and round types of Jenson restored, possible loss +of space by such a proceeding being obviated by greater care in the +building of the page and in the setting of the lines. + +The Arts and Crafts movement had, as we have seen, set people of taste +hunting for the lost threads of good craft tradition, and the _fin +de siècle_ revival of printing as an art-craft was one of the most +successful results of its efforts. The study of well-printed books +of the past led William Morris and Emery Walker towards what may be +called a new ethic of good printing. They set forth their ideas in a +joint essay forming one of the _Arts and Crafts Essays_ of 1893. +“The essential point to remember,” they said, “is that the ornament, +whatever it is, whether picture or pattern-work, should form _part +of the page_, should be a part of the whole scheme of the book. +Simple as this proposition is, it is necessary to be stated, because +the modern practice is to disregard the relation between the printing +and the ornament altogether, so that if the two are helpful to one +another it is a mere matter of accident. The due relation of letters +to pictures and other ornaments was thoroughly understood by the old +printers; so that, even when the woodcuts are very rude indeed, the +proportions of the page still give pleasure by the sense of richness +that the cuts and letters together convey. When, as is most often the +case, there is actual beauty in the cuts, the books so ornamented are +amongst the most delightful works of art that have ever been produced. +Therefore, granted well-designed type, due spacing of the lines and +words, and proper position of the page on the paper, all books might be +at least comely and well-looking; and if to these good qualities were +added really beautiful ornament and pictures, printed books might once +again illustrate to the full position of our Society that a work of +utility might be also a work of art, if we cared to make it so.” This +passage contains the germ idea of the return to fine printing. + +Still, although so much research and good work was done by William +Morris and Emery Walker, the desire to produce books of dignity and +beauty inspired more than one group of enthusiasts, and the founders +of the Kelmscott Press were not the first in practical results. _The +Hobby Horse_ (1886–1892), edited by Herbert P. Horne and Selwyn +Image, with its carefully built pages, was an earlier intimation of +coming developments, and Hacon & Ricketts devised a new typographical +beauty by the publication of _The Dial_, in 1889. The revival, +however, began to find itself at the Arts and Crafts Exhibition of +1888, when Emery Walker contributed an essay on printing to the +catalogue. In the years 1889 and 1890 Morris made a definitely +practical move by superintending the printing of three books, _The +House of the Wolfings_, _The Roots of the Mountains_ and the +_Gunnlang Saga_, at the Chiswick Press. All this time he had been +brooding upon the idea of a Press of his own, and he made his first +experiments towards the foundation of the Kelmscott Press in 1889 +and 1890. “What I wanted,” he wrote in the _Note_ on his aims in +founding the Kelmscott Press, “was letter pure in form; severe, without +needless excrescences; solid, without the thickening and thinning of +the line which is the essential fault of the ordinary modern type, and +which makes it difficult to read; and not compressed laterally, as +all later type has grown to be owing to commercial exigencies. There +was only one source from which to take examples of this perfected +Roman type--to wit, the works of the great Venetian printers of the +fifteenth century, of whom Nicholas Jenson produced the completest and +most Roman characters from 1470 to 1476. This type I studied with much +care, getting it photographed to a big scale, and drawing it over many +times before I began designing my own letters; so that though I think +I mastered the essence of it, I did not copy it servilely; in fact, my +Roman type, especially in the lower case, tends rather to the Gothic +than does Jenson’s.” The desire thus embodied in words became a living +fact. During 1890 Morris was experimenting with his types, and on the +31st January in the following year the first trial sheet was printed +on the Kelmscott Press, which had been set up in a cottage close to +Kelmscott House on the Upper Mall, Hammersmith. + + [Illustration: PAGE DECORATION FROM THE KELMSCOTT + COLERIDGE + + _By William Morris_] + +The first book printed was Morris’s own romance, _The Story of the +Glittering Plain_; it was finished on 4th April, and in the same year +_Poems by the Way_ was set up and printed. For the next five years, and +to the end of the great craftsman’s life, books were printed at the +rate of about ten each year, and in all fifty-three works were issued +during the life of the Press (1891–1897), which together stand unique +among books both for honesty of purpose and beauty of accomplishment. +The books published naturally reflect Morris’s own literary taste. +The act of printing was with him an act of reverence, and all of the +volumes issued were printed in the spirit of love of fine literature +and his own work. Three founts of type were created by Morris. The +first, called the “Golden,” was a Roman type inspired by Jenson but +having a Gothic appearance, which makes it unlike any other type in +existence. This fount has extremely beautiful letters, solid and clear, +making a page of vivid blackness combined with absolute legibility. +The next, called the “Troy,” was a large Gothic type, beautiful in +its way, and quite legible, but archaic in effect and unsuitable for +general printing. The last type to be cast was the “Chaucer”; this was +simply the “Troy” type reduced for the purpose of printing the noble +folio edition of the works of Geoffrey Chaucer. With these three founts +books of several sizes were produced with equally good results. There +were delightful 16mo’s, such as _The Tale of the Emperor Coustans_, +_The Friendship of Amis and Amile_ and Morris’s own lecture on _Gothic +Architecture_, which was printed by the Kelmscott Press at the Arts +and Crafts Exhibition of 1893. The octavos covered a wide field, and +included some of the masterpieces of the Press, notably the _Poems_ +of Coleridge, Tennyson’s _Maud_, _Hand and Soul_, by Dante Gabriel +Rossetti, and _The Nature of Gothic_, by Ruskin. The quartos contain +several of Morris’s own works, notable examples being _News from +Nowhere_ and _The Wood Beyond the World_, and Caxton’s _Historyes of +Troye_, _The Golden Legend_ and George Cavendish’s _Life of Cardinal +Wolsey_. Nine books were issued in folio--namely, _The History of +Reynard the Fox_ (1892), _The History of Godfrey of Bologne_ (1893), +_Sidonia the Sorceress_, by William Meinhold, translated by Lady +Wilde (1893), _The Story of the Glittering Plain_,[8] by William +Morris (1894); _Atalanta in Calydon_, by Swinburne (1894), _The Tale +of Beowulf_ (1895), _The Life and Death of Jason_, by William Morris +(1895), and _The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer_ (1896). + +Many of the volumes have woodcuts, chiefly from drawings by +Burne-Jones, and Morris designed all the elaborate initial letters, +borders, title-pages and other decorations. It would not be easy in the +ordinary way to single out any book for special notice among so many +masterpieces of printing, each possessing characteristics of its own +worthy of individual praise, but one book, and as it happens the one +that Morris printed with his fullest reverence, does actually stand +out from among the rest with distinction. That book is the noble folio +containing the works of Chaucer enshrined in type cast for the purpose, +with Morris’s own superb and appropriate decorations, and eighty-six +illustrations by Burne-Jones. Never was author paid so handsome a +tribute as by this book, and when it is in its complete form, with +Cobden-Sanderson’s binding, one is surely in the presence of the most +beautiful and the best designed book the world has ever seen. + +William Morris was essentially a decorator; he would have had every +one of the fine products of his amazing vitality burst into flower and +leaf, into wondrous device and every beauty of form. Yet in everything +he did the fine simplicity of his nature was a saving grace. But with +the books designed by Charles Ricketts we find the expression of an +entirely different temperament, or a temperament which was assertively +personal and essentially individual, as against the democratic and +communal sense of Morris. This individuality is seen in most of the +books of the Vale Press, and in those beautiful volumes, _The Dial_ and +Oscar Wilde’s _The Sphinx_ and _The House of Pomegranates_, which were +the immediate forerunners and first causes of that Press. + +Both William Morris and Charles Ricketts, however, were inspired in +their first founts by the classical types of Jenson, in whom the Roman +letter had its consummation, although the deep-rooted Gothic spirit +of Morris was naturally not to be tied to that particular form. The +significance of this adoption of the Roman type lies in the fact +that although the first movable types were a standardisation of the +written missal of the Middle Ages, and essentially Gothic in character, +lettering itself was of Greek and Roman origin. Indeed, where the +Teutonic designers departed most from the Roman standard, as they +did in their capital letters, they were not nearly so successful as +when they adhered more strictly to the earlier forms, as they did in +their superior “lower cases.” Morris, in spite of his intense love of +Gothic, fully realised this, and although the Kelmscott books in the +mass reveal beauties suggesting Caxton and Wenkyn de Worde, it will be +found on a more intimate acquaintance with them that the Renaissance +has contributed in no small way to their final charm. + +Just as William Morris, in Charles Ricketts’s words, derived +inspiration from the “sunny pages of the Renaissance,” and finally made +books equal to, and in some cases better than, the best books of the +Gothic printers, so Ricketts took inspiration from the same source, +and although the volumes of the Vale Press never quite resemble the +Gothic books, he has admitted the value even to him of the products of +the Kelmscott Press. Speaking of the books made under his supervision +before the establishment of the Vale Press, he wrote, in his _Defence +of the Revival of Printing_: “I regret that I had not then seen _The +House of the Wolfings_ or _The Roots of the Mountains_, printed for Mr +Morris as early as 1888[9]; these might have initiated me at the time +to a better and more severe style, and I am now puzzled that my first +impression of _The Glittering Plain_, 1891 (the first Kelmscott book), +was one of disappointment.” + +The earliest of the Ricketts books were inspired but not printed by +the founder of the Vale Press. They were and are a standing example of +what can be done through the ordinary commercial medium when taste is +in command. The illustrations, cover designs, end-papers, and general +format of these books were the work of Ricketts; and the type was the +best that could be found in some of the more responsible printing +houses. The first example of this work is to be found in _The Dial_--a +sumptuously printed quarto magazine first published at the Vale, +Chelsea, in 1889; No. 2 appeared in February 1892; No. 3 in October +1893; and No. 4, which bore the imprint, “Hacon & Ricketts,” in 1896; +the fifth and last number appearing in 1897. _The Dial_ was issued +under the joint editorship of Charles Ricketts and Charles H. Shannon. +The first number contained an etching by Ricketts and a lithograph +in colours and gold, and twelve other designs by him. The cover was +designed by Shannon, but was discarded in subsequent issues, its place +being taken by a superior design, cut as well as drawn by Ricketts. +In the second number the latter also makes his first appearance as an +engraver on wood, one of the main features of the volume being his +series of initial letters, ornaments, head-pieces, and _culs-de-lampe_. +In No. 4 of _The Dial_ appeared two specimen pages of the Vale Press, +then being formed. + +Before the Press was established, however, other important books had +been issued under his supervision. One of the earliest of these, +_Silverpoints_, by John Gray, was published by Elkin Mathews and John +Lane in 1893. A few of the initials of this uncommon but elegant +volume are decorated, but the majority are simple Roman capitals, the +text of the volume being in italics. Earlier even than this the two +artists had collaborated in the production of Oscar Wilde’s _House of +Pomegranates_, published by Messrs Osgood, M’Ilvaine & Co. in 1891. +The result was less a success than a curious attempt at decorated +bookmaking; the most successful parts being the vignettes by Ricketts. +Among other books of this period are the _Poems_ of Lord de Tabley +and _In the Key of Blue_, by John Addington Symonds, the former with +illustrations and cover, the latter with cover only, by Ricketts. + +All these books were more or less tentative. The road towards +perfection was being made; something very like perfection was reached, +however, in the _Daphnis and Chloe_ (1893), the _Hero and Leander_ +(1894) and _The Sphinx_ (1894)--the two first published by Ricketts & +Shannon at the Vale Press, the last by Mr John Lane. The _Daphnis and +Chloe_ is a quarto volume printed in old-faced pica type and profusely +and beautifully illustrated with designs and initial letters from +woodcuts. It is said to be “the first book published in modern times +with woodcuts by the artist in a page arranged by himself.” _Hero and +Leander_ (Marlowe & Chapman’s version) is an octavo; it is conceived in +a more restrained key, and the result is altogether more satisfying, +in spite of a formal hardness in the setting of the decorations. Theme +may have something to do with this, just as it has in _Daphnis and +Chloe_, where the lightness of the subject carries triumphantly the +luxuriance of the decorations. _The Sphinx_, by Oscar Wilde, is the +most remarkable of the books of this period. It is a small quarto in +ivory-like vellum, with a rich design in gold, printed and decorated +throughout in red, green and black. The exotic mind of Wilde is +revealed in the decorations of this volume more than in any other: the +strange vision of things, the imagination that moulds passionate ideas +into figures which are almost ascetic, and into arabesques which are in +themselves glimpses and revelations of the intricate mystery of life. + + [Illustration: PAGE DECORATIONS FROM JOHN GRAY’S + _SPIRITUAL POEMS (VALE PRESS)_ + + _By Charles Ricketts_] + +The first book printed in the Vale type was _The Early Poems of John +Milton_, a quarto decorated with initials and frontispiece, cut by +the artist on wood. Speaking of the frontispiece of this volume, H. +C. Marillier says: “It is interesting to compare this with one of the +Kelmscott frontispieces, in order to realise how completely individual +is each case, and how different is the design of the borders. There is +nothing in all the flowing tracery of William Morris which remotely +resembles the intricate knot-work and geometrical orderliness of the +Milton borders.” This is true, and a further glance at the Vale Press +books reveals also that the inventiveness of Charles Ricketts is much +greater than that of William Morris, though it is not so free and, +paradoxically, not so formal. But, unlike those of Morris, the Vale +designs do not convey a sense of inevitability, a feeling that the +design is the unconscious blossoming of the page. + +The Kelmscott books not only look as if letter and decoration had grown +one out of the other; they look as if they could go on growing. The +Vale Press books, on the other hand, have all the supersensitiveness +of things which have been deliberately made according to a fastidious +though eclectic taste and a strict formula. It is the difference +between naturalness and refinement. Yet at the same time, although +Ricketts does not suggest organic growth in his decorated books, he +suggests growth by segregation--by a rearrangement of parts which +seem to have come together mathematically, or which are built up in +counterpoint like a theme in music. Particularly do we get this effect +from the decorations of the Vale Shakespeare and from many of the minor +decorated leaves throughout all the volumes. In the use of leaf figures +as a kind of super-punctuation, an intellectual process seems to have +taken the place of the subtle and indefinable taste which dominates +matters of art. The leaves seem to have been _thought_ into their +places, and the result is not always happy. + +The books of the Vale Press have other qualities which distinguish them +from those of other similar presses. The Kelmscott Press, in the matter +of bindings, for instance, confined itself to vellum and plain grey +boards. The Doves Press, established in the next decade, adhered to a +fine and peculiar kind of vellum. The Vale Press books made a departure +in several instances by appearing in daintily decorated paper boards +of various colours, the designs having a pleasant chintz-like effect, +more often to be met with in the end-papers of some modern books, but +an obvious development of the Italian decorated paper cover. Again +colours, red and sometimes blue and green, play a large part in the +pages of the Vale Press books, blending with the black in many cases +most satisfactorily. + +Some fifty books in all were produced, and these covered a wide +literary field, including such works as Landor’s _Epicurus_, _Leontion_ +and _Ternissa_; _Spiritual Poems_, by John Gray; _Fair Rosamund_, by +Michael Field; the poems of Sir John Suckling; Shakespeare’s _Songs +and Sonnets_; _Nymphidia_, by Michael Drayton; Campion’s songs; +_Empedocles_, by Matthew Arnold; two volumes of Blake, and two of +Keats; Sir Philip Sidney’s sonnets; _Dramatic Romances_, by Robert +Browning; the _Lyrical Poems_ of Shelley; _The Ancient Mariner_, by +S. T. Coleridge; _Sonnets from the Portuguese_, by Elizabeth Barrett +Browning; _Hand and Soul_ and _The Blessed Damozel_, by Dante Gabriel +Rossetti. Besides these, certain volumes illustrated by Lucien Pissarro +were issued under the imprimatur of the Vale although printed on the +artist’s own private press, afterwards to be known as the Eragny Press. + +The Vale Press books were not presumably the kind of books destined +for an immediate and wide popularity. Yet each issue was speedily +taken up by the limited public there is for fine examples of art-work, +and the fact that almost immediately, and sometimes before the date +of publication, the volumes were being quoted in the book markets at +a premium would indicate that the books were not above the taste of +everybody. Be this as it may, the demand for such books compared with +that of the ordinary commercial volume was, and is at any time, a small +one. At the same time, the effect of the Vale Press publications upon +the general taste in books has been more pronounced than that of any +of the other great presses of the Eighteen Nineties. This is probably +due to the fact that Charles Ricketts not only at first worked through +the ordinary publisher, but that he had his work done by a good trade +firm of printers, Messrs Ballantyne & Hanson, and did not own, as +William Morris did, his own presses. In the same way Morris himself had +a marked effect upon ordinary straightforward printing, by insisting +upon an intelligent use of Caslon’s old-faced type when supervising the +printing of his own prose works. He knew it was not safe to leave so +important a matter to the haphazard of commerce. The supreme result of +this concern is to be seen, of course, in the splendid first edition of +_The Roots of the Mountains_, issued by Messrs Reeves & Turner and +printed at the Chiswick Press. The influence of Charles Ricketts’ books +is to be seen in many of the early publications of Mr John Lane and +Messrs Dent & Co.; and the latter firm attempted deliberately to follow +the Kelmscott tradition with Aubrey Beardsley’s edition of the _Morte +d’Arthur_. + +After the death of William Morris and the conclusion of the work of +the Kelmscott Press, those who acted as Morris’s assistants in the +actual work of printing joined C. R. Ashbee of the Guild of Handicraft, +who established the Essex House Press, using a fount of type designed +by himself. Several well-printed volumes were the result of this +enterprise, including the _Treatises of Benvenuto Cellini on Metal +Work and Sculpture_, Bunyan’s _Pilgrim’s Progress_, Shakespeare’s +_Poems_, Shelley’s _Adonais_, and _King Edward VII.’s Prayer Book_, a +noble folio printed in red and black. Some interesting books were also +printed by H. G. Webb at the Caradoc Press; and a simple dignity and +altogether pleasant result has been achieved by Miss Elizabeth C. Yeats +in the books printed on the Dun Emer, later called the Cuala Press, at +Dundrum near Dublin. + +But the most notable outcome of the revival of printing since the +closing of the Kelmscott and Vale presses is the Doves Press, +established in 1900 by T. J. Cobden-Sanderson at Hammersmith. A +beautiful Roman type was designed by Emery Walker, whose genius for +fine craftsmanship in everything associated with the printing arts +made for the further success of this venture which has to its credit a +series of books of unsurpassable beauty. The Doves Press, although in +the direct line of descent from Morris, was to some extent a reaction +against decorated page, and by adhering strictly to the formal beauty +of well-designed type and a well-built page it proved that all the +requirements of good taste, good craftsmanship and utility could +be achieved. There is nothing, for instance, quite so effective as +the first page of the Doves Bible, with its great red initial “I” +dominating the left-hand margin of the opening chapter of Genesis +like a symbol of the eternal wisdom and simplicity of the wonderful +Book. Neither foliation nor arabesque could better have introduced the +first verse of the story of the Creation than this flaming, sword-like +initial. This edition of the Bible in itself represents the last +refuge of the complex in the simple, and stands beside the Kelmscott +_Chaucer_ without loss by comparison in beauty or workmanship. + +The Doves Press came nearer than the other private presses towards the +realisation of its founder’s axiom of the whole duty of typography, +which, he said, was “to communicate to the imagination, without loss +by the way, the thought or image intended to be communicated by the +author.” + + [Illustration: FRONTISPIECE AND TITLE-PAGE OF _THE + HOUSE OF JOY_ + + _By Laurence Housman_] + + + + + CHAPTER XX + + BRITISH IMPRESSIONISTS + + +In spite of the efforts of the Arts and Crafts movement the average +man was still unmoved from his conviction that art was an affair of +pictures. He even went so far as to believe that the new art movement +was only accidentally derived from pictorial art and would eventually +end where it began--in something to hang on a wall. He was supported +in this belief by the usual predominance given to picture talk in +the discussions of the contending art factions. The Nineties were +very fruitful of such discussions, inheriting as they did the still +unsettled principles and contentions which survived from the artistic +battles of the Eighties. These battles were never more than the +British echo of French Impressionism, but they were complicated by the +so-called naturalism of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. The latter was +largely the affair of the preceding thirty years, and with the dawn of +the Nineties Pre-Raphaelitism had become an accepted art convention for +those desirous of accepting it, and a subject of indifference for the +rest. + +Whistler, allied with but apart from the Impressionists, had fought the +fight of the open-air school to as conclusive an end as such contests +ever reach. And Ruskin’s ideas had been almost entirely diverted into +their more defensible channels of craftsmanship. George Moore had been +for several years holding aloft the banner of French Impressionism +with conspicuous success, in _The Speaker_ and elsewhere, and William +Ernest Henley had fought in _The Scots Observer_ an equally vigorous +and equally successful battle on behalf of the same ideals, laying +stress upon a realism more definitely associated with romance. But in +the midst of all this talk about paint and technique and new methods of +approaching Nature, there was a very real undercurrent of philosophic +thought which was not afraid of associating pictorial art with social +life and action. The old sanity of applied art constantly reasserted +itself in the newer movements. Whistler also, when occasion offered, +did not scorn applied art, as we know from his enthusiasm over the +decoration of the Peacock Room at Sir James Leyland’s house, and of his +own house in Chelsea. Frank Brangwyn was as much inclined towards mural +painting as George Frederick Watts, whilst William Nicholson, James +Pryde, Dudley Hardy and Aubrey Beardsley devoted time and talent to the +creation of a national school of poster decorators. And the revival of +the decorated book gave black and white art a new sphere of expression. + +Even so uncompromising an advocate of the framed picture as George +Moore was not averse from discussing the value of pictures in +relation to national life. Speaking of the practical utility of the +Impressionist pictures he said: “They would inspire not only a desire +to possess beautiful things, but I can imagine young men and women +deriving an extraordinary desire of freedom from the landscapes +of Monet and Sisley: Manet, too. Manet, perhaps, more than anyone +liberates the mind from conventions, from prejudices. He creates a +spirit of revolt against the old; he inculcates a desire of adventure. +Adam standing in Eden looking at the sun rise was no more naked and +unashamed than Manet. I believe that a gallery of Impressionist +pictures would be more likely than any other pictures to send a man +to France, and that is a great point. Everyone must go to France. +France is the source of all the arts. Let the truth be told. We go +there, every one of us, like rag-pickers, with baskets on our backs, +to pick up the things that come in our way, and out of unconsidered +trifles fortunes have often been made. We learn in France to appreciate +not only art--we learn to appreciate life, to look upon life as an +incomparable gift. In some café, in some Nouvelle Athènes, named though +it be not in any Baedeker nor marked on any traveller’s chart, the +young man’s soul will be exalted to praise life. Art is but praise +of life, and it is only through art that we can praise life.” Such an +attitude is inseparable from the modern art movement, and it survives +to-day in the development of the decorative arts among the Post +Impressionists. + + [Illustration: THE PEACOCK FAN + + _By Charles Conder_ + + _In the possession of Mr. Grant Richards_] + +Conventional pictorial art in this country at the time of the modern +revolt had long suffered from hopeless privacy and class distinction. +Richard Muther says: “English painting is exclusively an art based +on luxury, optimism and aristocracy; in its neatness, cleanliness +and good-breeding it is exclusively designed to ingratiate itself +with English ideas of comfort. Yet the pictures have to satisfy very +different tastes--the taste of a wealthy middle class which wishes to +have substantial nourishment, and the æsthetic taste of an _élite_ +class, which will only tolerate the quintessence of art, the most +subtle art that can be given. But all these works are not created for +galleries, but for the drawing-room of a private house, and in subject +and treatment they have all to reckon with the ascendant view that +a picture ought, in the first place, to be an attractive article of +furniture for the sitting-room. The traveller, the lover of antiquity, +is pleased by imitation of the ancient style; the sportsman, the lover +of country life, has a delight in little rustic scenes, and the women +are enchanted with feminine types. And everything must be kept within +the bounds of what is charming, temperate and prosperous, without in +any degree suggesting the struggle for existence. The pictures have +themselves the grace of that mundane refinement from the midst of which +they are beheld.” Into some such condition of pictorial art the new +men threw themselves, opening windows, as it were, and allowing the +outside world, with all its rudeness and all its unseen and unrealised +beauties, to enter. + +The organised revolt took the form of protest by the New English Art +Club against the Royal Academy, and of the Glasgow School against +the conventions of the Royal Scottish Academy, and as art movements +generally begin elsewhere and end here, the battles they were fighting +represented practically the end of the fight for Impressionism. The +artistic public was gradually becoming used to pictures that were +visions of light and atmosphere rather than pictorial anecdotes, and +the leaders of the new movement were being absorbed by both academies. +Absorption by the old enemy was, however, not the fate of all the +revolutionaries, for several, including their earliest leader, Wilson +Steer, maintained an attitude of no compromise. Neither did the battle +with academic conventions end with the work of the two groups of +artists named. It was carried on into the new century and linked up +with new movements by the International Society of Painters, Sculptors +and Gravers, founded, with Whistler as President and Lavery as +Vice-President, in 1898. + +The outstanding painters of the Impressionist movement in this country +represented all phases of modern art and considerable variety of +individual expression. There were Walter Sickert, Maitland and Roussel, +who received early inspiration from Whistler; the realists of the +Newlyn School led by Stanhope Forbes, and deriving their art from +Bastien Lepage; and more individual and, consequently, less easily +classified, such painters as George Clausen, John S. Sargent, Wilson +Steer, William Rothenstein, Frank Brangwyn, William Nicholson, William +Orpen and, later on, Augustus John; whilst standing apart from any +particular “movement,” but none the less modern, were Charles Conder, +Dudley Hardy, Maurice Greiffenhagen, Robert Fowler, Sidney H. Sime, +Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon. The Glasgow School included +most of the Scottish painters who became subjects of discussion at +the Grosvenor Gallery Exhibition promoted by Sir Coutts Lindsay, on +the suggestion of Clausen, in 1890. Among the men from the north who +were either associated with the Glasgow group or in sympathy with its +bid for freedom were John Lavery, James Guthrie, Arthur Melville, E. +A. Hornel, T. Millie Dow, George Henry, James Pryde, D. Y. Cameron, +Harrington Mann, W. Y. Macgregor and, at a later date, J. T. Peploe and +John Duncan Fergusson. + +Out of this wealth of artistic genius it would be idle to classify +or to associate any single painter finally with any definite group +of painters, even though he had deliberately allied himself with +one or the other schools or coteries. The really big men of the +period can only be classified in so indefinite a way as to make such +classification almost worthless. The artistic associations of the +period are interesting from another point of view. They prove the +existence not only of widespread activity in painting, but of a healthy +desire for that camaraderie which hitherto, with the exception of the +friendships of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, had been almost confined +to Paris. But if classification is impossible or unnecessary it is +quite permissible to show how remarkably the artists of the time were +grouped by the prevailing modern tendency. And it is interesting to +note that, although the forward movement in pictorial art absolved +itself from all charges of literariness, its very existence was a +part of that trend of modern ideas which was affecting all the arts. +In literature the tendency was called Realism, in the graphic arts it +was called Impressionism. In this book I have called it--the search +for reality. That search was the culmination of all the activities +and changes of the nineteenth century. And in the last decade of the +century it saw the human mind fall back upon individual preference as +the surest guide to the fine arts and the bigger and more difficult art +of life. + +Every painter of the Nineties who stood for modernity strove to use +his own personality and his own experience as the test of his art. He +may have said that he would paint things as they are, but in his heart +he knew that that was an impossible ideal. Those painters of genius +who had set out with the intention had ended always by painting their +own particular view of things, and modern art-philosophy sought to +prove, and succeeded in proving, that such results justified the means. +Auguste Rodin, who is the greatest, as well as the most realistic and +most personal, of modern sculptors, insisted upon the reverent and +exact copying of Nature as a means towards personal expression. And as +a further proof that naturalism may produce personal variety, one has +but to remember the Pre-Raphaelites, who were as devoted in the pursuit +of natural exactitude as any of the Impressionists; but, with the +possible exception of Ford Madox Brown, they never produced a canvas +that was not romantic and literary, and, in spite of the most devoted +attention to Nature, unnatural. The cause of this was that, whilst +talking much of Nature, they were not inspired by physical reality +at all. They were essentially a group of thinkers and visionaries, +and the whole of the movement was book-inspired. It was the result +of life approached by way of the Arthurian and the Biblical legends, +Dante and Shakespeare, and the observation of natural things always +subserved this literary interest. The Pre-Raphaelites brought with them +a fine æsthetic sense and high purpose, and some of them could draw, +and all of them paint, but, without any intention of under-estimating +their achievement, it must be admitted that they never succeeded in +doing more than represent in paint what had already been realised in +literature. + +The Impressionists adopted the opposite course. They treated the art +of painting as the medium of actual sight. What could be seen rather +than what could be thought or imagined was the business of their art. +This did not mean the ultimate eradication of thought from painting, +but it did mean that thought must take second place to vision. Where +thought existed in the artist it was bound to show in his work, but +that work was primarily a view of life arranged in tones and values of +colour and light. As a matter of fact, the Impressionist paintings do +actually reveal abundance of thought, and nowadays it is quite easy to +see that the movement was even more intellectual than Pre-Raphaelitism; +but never in the literary sense. In this country Impressionism did +not reach its logical conclusion. The older English movement had its +uncompromising Holman Hunt, as Impressionism in France had its Manet, +but the modernists of the Nineties in this country recognised no +logic of progress save idiosyncrasy or circumstance. For that reason +the period produced no convention in painting. It borrowed much from +France and something from Germany, it defended its adopted ideas with +spirit, it compromised where and when it liked, and it argued about the +meaning of art, sometimes as if a definition would confirm or compel +a renaissance. For the rest, it produced many competent painters, but +fewer than might have been expected who could be said to represent the +peculiar genius of the age. + +The characteristic artists of the period were drawn from no particular +school; indeed, in many instances they were quite remote from all +definable groups. Aubrey Beardsley, although deriving in some measure +from Burne-Jones, might easily have stepped out of eighteenth-century +France with Charles Conder; Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon, +Robert Fowler and Maurice Greiffenhagen, although recalling +past influences, have each sufficient individuality to stand as +manifestations of the more definite spirit of the period without in any +single instance representing all that was modern or strikingly new. + +Charles Conder represents perhaps more than any of these artists, +except Beardsley, the peculiar artificial mood of the Nineties. His +work has the indefinable hot-house atmosphere of the decadence. The +drowsiness of a replete civilisation idles through his paintings, and +to the innate luxury of his themes he added the material luxury of the +silk panels and fans which he loved to decorate. Nothing is decisive +about his vision save the voluptuousness of doing nothing. His world +is all languorous and dreamful, and there is no movement except the +occasional strolling or dancing of stately or delicate persons and +the swaying of fans; no sound save the rustle of silk or the music of +faintly touched harps or viols; no odours save those of flowers and +scented bodies; and for place and boundary there is only colour--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. “Conder’s women are not timeless,” writes Charles Ricketts, +“they have forgotten their age; but this, like beauty, is often a +mere matter of opinion! We shall find their histories on the stage +of Beaumarchais: they have passed into the realms of immortality not +in the paintings of Watteau but in the melodies of Mozart. They are +‘The Countess,’ Susanna, Donna Elvira; all are anxious to pardon--they +are peeping at the moving pageant, for Don Juan was seen but a moment +since. But what can have detained Donna Anna? It is so late, the ‘Queen +of the Night’ has sung her great aria, the air is close--there are too +many roses!” Too many roses! Charles Conder’s art is in that phrase. +It is the art of the privileged, recalling the decadent folk who were +the prey of the Morlocks in H. G. Wells’ romance. Watteau, Fragonard +and Monticelli have each contributed something towards the making of +this delicate art, but, as Ricketts points out, “the rest of his art +is modern, and was possible only at the time in which it appeared.” +If the _Fêtes Galantes_ of Watteau became literature in Paul +Verlaine, they were translated back into painting by Charles Conder; +and both he and the poet added to them their own special sense of the +world-weariness of modernity. + + [Illustration: THE ARRIVAL OF PRINCE CHARMING + + _By Charles Conder_ + + _From the picture in the possession of Mr. Grant + Richards_] + +Equally characteristic of the Nineties, but of a more virile type, +were James Pryde and William Nicholson. Pryde took the life about +him as his model, the town folk and the country folk, and with +power and originality made them live again in paint. Nicholson saw +both the countryside and the town with a new vision which combined +when transferred to his canvases reticence of colour and power of +suggestion. During the period his masterly series of woodcuts in +colour were widely known and appreciated at first through the series +of portraits in _The New Review_, and later in such volumes as +_London Types_ and the _Almanack of Twelve Sports_. It was Pryde and +Nicholson, under the title of the Beggarstaff Brothers, who gave the +poster movement, already well established in France, something like +a firm basis in this country. They were not alone in the field, but +it was their work which made British genius a factor to be reckoned +with in a peculiarly modern branch of art. Each had studied in Paris +and had doubtless come under the spell of the striking poster work of +Toulouse-Lautrec, but the designs afterwards produced by them were in +no sense imitative. Indeed, as Charles Hiatt has pointed out, their +posters were intensely English in character. “In their way,” he said, +“they are as racy of the soil as the caricatures of Rowlandson, the +paintings of Morland, or the drawings of Charles Keene.” The work of +the Beggarstaff Brothers was first seen at the Poster Exhibition held +at the Royal Aquarium, Westminster, in 1894. Their exhibit included +the masterly _Hamlet_, stencilled in four colours, and a number of +sketches and studies for posters of all kinds. The attractive use +of simple masses of colour without shading, in fine, the entirely +successful application of the idea of the stencil to poster work, made +the artists famous at a bound, and their posters became familiar and +altogether satisfying features of the street hoardings. It is worth +recording, however, that although the Beggarstaff Brothers won so much +appreciation, there were people who could see nothing but blotches +of paint in the new work. This may be illustrated by a story told +of an early adventure of the artists with a client. The Beggarstaff +Brothers had been commissioned to produce a poster for the Drury Lane +Pantomime, 1895–1896. The result was that classic among posters, the +_Cinderella_. But the work did not find favour with Sir Augustus +Harris; and the famous manager was supported in his dislike by Dan +Leno, who thought the poster looked as though someone had spilt ink +down it. The situation was saved by the fortunate arrival of Phil May, +who, realising the state of affairs, turned the position by innocently +congratulating Sir Augustus on having been so fortunate in obtaining +such an effective advertisement. + +The chief characteristics of painting in the Nineties were personal +courage and adventurous technique. Years of strife with convention +had at length cleared a path for free play in both, and, although +skirmishing still continued, those who desired to be themselves in +paint had at least as much encouragement as their brothers in the +literary camp. + +The works of painters who thought and dreamt about life were, of +course, as numerous as ever, but no exhibition was complete without +specimens of the work of those painters who added to thought and +imagination the revived faculty of careful observation. And even modern +artists who remained visionaries and dreamers adopted a symbolism of +form and colour which possessed a new delicacy and an approximation +to observed knowledge in keeping with the tendencies of the period +though of earlier inspiration. Ricketts and Charles Shannon achieved +rare qualities of imaginative expression with fine technique; Maurice +Greiffenhagen and Robert Fowler gave Impressionism a romantic meaning, +and symbolism found exponents in these painters and others, and in the +work of many black and white artists and pen-draughtsmen. But the final +pictorial achievement of the period is not to be found in one artist, +but in many; perhaps not in any painter or group of painters, but in +the fresh possibilities of vision thrown open by the whole artistic +effort of the decade, possibilities which led always to the most modern +of all accomplishments--the art of looking at life in one’s own way. + +It is not easy to single out painters from among the large number +contributing to this movement, but a fair idea of the more normal +tendencies which have survived from the time may be acquired by a +consideration of three typical _fin de siècle_ artists whose work +has maintained its high quality and distinction down to to-day. These +painters are John Lavery, William Rothenstein and Frank Brangwyn. +Each of them represents a compromise with Impressionism. They are +Impressionists, each in his own way, but the way of each is to add to +an essentially realistic idea some personal quality which prevents +that idea ever reaching its full logical conclusion. Lavery is in +the Velasquez-Whistler descent, and he possesses technical reserves +which might, had he been a Frenchman, have urged him into the camp +of scientific Impressionism. He preferred to use his modern skill, +and all that modernity had taught him in the way of vision, in mating +reality with sentiment. He lacks Whistler’s decorative sense, and even +when he is most realistic he never achieves the frankness of a Manet +or a Degas. But taking what he wants from reality, and adding what he +pleases from human sentiment (which is also reality), he has created a +series of paintings with some of the technical qualities of Whistler’s +portraits, but nothing of that profound sense of character which +immortalises those works. + +William Rothenstein carries Impressionism further than Lavery, and +instead of sentiment he adds a remarkably keen sense of reality to +thoughtfulness and spirituality. His pictures are interpretations. In +all of them intellect plays an important part; but he is too much of an +artist ever to allow mind finally to dominate imagination or vision. +He recalls George Frederick Watts in his concern for what is lofty +in thought and inspiring in idea, although he has never illustrated +abstract ideas after the manner of Watts, nor are his pictures +didactic. His works impress by quiet profundity of theme and fine +qualities of light and colour. His test for art, as expressed in the +introductory chapter of his essay on _Goya_ (1900), can be applied +with success to his own pictures: “For however many reasons men may +give for the admiration of masterpieces,” he said, “it is in reality +the probity and intensity with which the master has carried out his +work, by which they are dominated; and it is his method of overcoming +difficulties, not of evading them, which gives style, breadth and +becoming mystery to his execution. And this quality of intensity, +whether it be the result of curiosity for form, or of a profound +imagination for nature, which lives, as it were, upon the surface of +a drawing, or of a picture, is the best test we have for what we may +consider as art.” Rothenstein has many of the characteristics of the +Nineties--curiosity about life and thought, personality in vision and +statement, and that sincerity of aim which is originality; but he is +never decadent, if only for the reason that he never looked upon art as +a thing in itself, but as a means towards the fulfilment of life. + +Impressionism and romanticism meet in the art of Frank Brangwyn, +as Impressionism and sentiment meet in that of John Lavery, and +Impressionism and intellect in Rothenstein. But more than that--a +picture by Brangwyn is a bridge between private luxury and public +splendour. His art suggests the big virile world made splendid by +the romance of action. His pictures, even his etchings, seem to have +small relationship with what are called the fine arts; they are not +to be associated with dainty things: the bric-à-brac of drawing-rooms +and the baubles of collectors and connoisseurs. Brangwyn’s work +has no connection with such things. He is as far removed from them +as Walt Whitman is from the writers of drawing-room love lyrics. +Everything about his work is large and vigorous. His vivid colours, +his heroic masses of form, his bold lighting, even apart from any +bigness of canvas, suggest the public place rather than the room. +Frank Brangwyn is, in fact, a decorative painter. Impressionism in its +less imaginative aspects hardly touched him; he learnt from it what +all artists could learn without endangering imagination or individual +genius--the use of light in relation to colour and form. And this +knowledge he applied to his own inborn sense of design in the creation +of those richly patterned mural paintings which in themselves are +little short of an artistic renaissance. + +It will be seen from these three examples that the painters of the +period were wide-ranged in vision. Yet even they symbolise little more +than the broad and normal phases of painting. Such painters, to name +but three more, as Walter Sickert, James Pryde and E. A. Hornel, are as +different in every way from Lavery, Rothenstein and Brangwyn, as they +are from one another. But they also represent the period. Sickert by +his mastery over his materials and by the individuality of his outlook; +Pryde by equal mastery and equal individuality in addition to rare +insight into character; and Hornel by his unique sense of decoration +and colour. Such variety among painters was hitherto unknown in this +country, and apart from the vitality it reveals, it indicates also a +complete victory over academic convention, and the creation of such a +margin of freedom as would permit of any painter thenceforth expressing +himself in his own way. This freedom, subject of battle for several +decades, was consummated in the Nineties. + + + + + CHAPTER XXI + + IN BLACK AND WHITE + + +In no other branch of pictorial art was there so much activity during +the whole of the period, and, on the whole, so much undisputed +excellence, as in the various pen and pencil drawings which blossomed +from innumerable books and periodicals. To a considerable extent this +remarkable efflorescence of an art which had remained passive for +so many years was an offshoot of the renaissance of decorative art. +But not entirely was this so, for there were notable developments +also among those artists who were content to illustrate a theme +in the usual nineteenth-century manner without any regard for the +appearance of the printed page. These artists were not concerned with +the ultimate balance and proportion of a book as a work of art; their +business was interpretative, and their medium, pictures, and they +considered it an achievement to make drawings which, whilst serving +their immediate illustrative purpose, remained in themselves separate +and even independent pictures. The two tendencies in black and white +art had existed side by side in the past; generally, however, one was +degenerating whilst the other was developing in power. But in the +Nineties both achieved a distinction rarely, if ever, attained before, +either individually or together. The Italian Renaissance had its great +decorated books, and many years later the Victorian period produced +a group of ingenious and capable wood-engravers, who often strove +to recapture the lost decorative sense, but without much success. +Whilst the Renaissance had no illustrators as we understand them, the +Victorian period could boast such masterly comic artists in black and +white as John Leech, Charles Keene and George du Maurier. But at no +other time were there existing in this country such book decorators as +William Morris, Walter Crane, Charles Ricketts, Laurence Housman and +Aubrey Beardsley, together with such illustrators as Phil May, S. H. +Sime, Bernard Partridge, Linley Sambourne, Harry Furniss, Raven Hill +and E. J. Sullivan. It was left for the final decade of the nineteenth +century to show, in an outburst of ability as prolific as it was +varied, the full strength of our native genius for all forms of black +and white art, just as earlier in the century we exhibited a similar +facility in the art of landscape painting. + +The idea of book decoration which developed to so great an extent in +the Nineties was, of course, closely related to the Arts and Crafts +movement and the revival of good printing. But with the exception +of William Morris and Charles Ricketts few designers had facilities +for that intimate association with reproductive methods which was +considered so essential. The application of photography to pictorial, +reproductive processes further aided in widening this breach between +designer and producer and helped to create a separate class of +decorative book illustrators who were personally independent of the +crafts of reproduction. The weaknesses of the decorated books of the +period are due rather to this separation of art and craft than to any +absence of capacity on either side. The aim of the book decorators, +as in the case of the best printers, was to produce designs which +should not be beautiful merely in themselves but beautiful in their +relationship to the whole of the book--both from the point of view of +appearance and idea. “I think,” wrote Walter Crane, in _Decorative +Illustration_ (1896), “that book illustration should be something more +than a collection of accidental sketches. Since one cannot ignore the +constructive organic element in the formation--the idea of the book +itself--it is so far inartistic to leave it out of account in designing +work intended to form an essential or integral part of that book. I do +not, however, venture to assert that decorative illustration can only +be done in _one_ way--if so, there would be an end in that direction to +originality or individual feeling. There is nothing absolute in art, +and one cannot dogmatise, but it seems to me that in all designs +certain conditions must be acknowledged, and not only acknowledged but +accepted freely, just as one would accept the rules of a game before +attempting to play it.” In short, the desire of those illustrators +who were at all conscious of any special desire as designers was for +formality within the convention and circumstances of the printed book. + + [Illustration: A VOLUPTUARY + + “To rise, to take a little opium, to sleep till lunch, and + after again to take a little opium, and sleep till dinner, + _that_ is a life of pleasure.” + + _By L. Raven Hill_] + +Throughout the greater part of the century the tradition of the +decorated book had been allowed to lapse. The actual renaissance +of book decoration began when the leaders of the Pre-Raphaelite +Brotherhood, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais and Holman +Hunt, made their illustrations for the famous edition of Tennyson’s +_Poems_, published by Moxon in 1857. This book was not, however, +a decorated book in the true sense, but its illustrations were +essentially designs in spirit. The modern decorated book itself was not +born until 1861, when Rossetti designed the title-page of his _Early +Italian Poets_. No great enthusiasm was shown for the revived art, +and for some years the deliberate arrangement of book illustrations in +the form of design was practically confined to the admirable series +of children’s books invented by Kate Greenaway and Walter Crane and, +to some extent, those of Randolph Caldecott. During the late Eighties +and early Nineties _The English Illustrated Magazine_ helped to +satisfy a growing taste for formal illustration, and Herbert Horne and +Selwyn Image anticipated somewhat the future glories of the Kelmscott +and Vale presses, in the handsome and dignified pages of _The Hobby +Horse_. Then came the books of the presses named, as recorded in +an earlier chapter, and presently publishers were competing with +one another in the production of decorated books, a remarkable and +distinguished number being issued during the years under review. + +It was Walter Crane more than any other artist who consistently and +indomitably carried the torch of book decoration through the dark days +preceding the full revival. Influenced by Durer and the early German +wood-engravers, he developed mastery and individuality of his own. The +decorative sense is given freedom in his work, with the result that his +drawings are always uncompromising designs in strict relation to the +book of which they become parts. There are no illustrated books of the +Nineties which satisfy the demands of decorative art more eloquently +than Crane’s _Faerie Queene_, _Reynard the Fox_ and _The Shepherd’s +Calendar_. In each of these the achievement is greater because the +artist succeeds in freeing himself from the convention of the decorated +manuscripts by fashioning his design to that of the modern printed +page. He thus escaped the archaic tendencies of William Morris and +Burne Jones and became more definitely associated with the younger +school of draughtsmen who were striving to put the spirit of modernity +into their work. His designs were also used in an effective series of +Socialist cartoons, notable among which is the fine processional work +“The Triumph of Labour,” designed to commemorate the International +Labour Day, 1st May 1891, and other examples of his black and white +drawings are to be found on the covers of books, and in several notable +devices for publishing and other trading concerns. + +Walter Crane’s decorative drawings had a marked effect on the younger +men of the period, but the influence stimulated the general decorative +movement in regard to illustration rather than imitation of the master. + + [Illustration: ILLUSTRATION FROM “_THE FAERIE + QUEENE_” + + _By Walter Crane_] + +Book decoration was striving to become modern at the time the Kelmscott +Press was started just as vigorously as Morris strove to link it with +tradition. There was no set contest between the conflicting ideas +and the original Pre-Raphaelite, and Arts and Crafts influences were +too recent for the clear definition of any line of demarcation by +intrinsically contending factions. The whole of the decorative revival +was under the spell of Morris and the group of painters and poets who +in turn influenced him. Walter Crane, though so closely associated +with William Morris, came less under his influence as a book decorator +than might have been expected, and both Charles Ricketts and C. H. +Shannon worked out original ideas in design. So modern a designer as +Aubrey Beardsley came, however, under the prevailing influence; and +Laurence Housman could hardly have decorated so well had not Morris +and Ricketts preceded him. The arabesque borders of William Macdougal +were more modern in spirit, though less satisfying in effect, and the +happy pictures and head-pieces and tail-pieces of Charles Robinson, +as well as the vigorous Japonesque decorations of Edgar Wilson, were +altogether novel and appropriate, as were those also of H. Granville +Fell. But it was R. Anning Bell who caught the more fanciful decorative +spirit of the times with his drawings for _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_ +(1895), and other books, including a volume of Keats’ _Poems_. In these +drawings Anning Bell departed from the luxuriant effects of Morris, +Crane, Ricketts and Beardsley, and, working in the realm of fancy, +succeeded in producing illustrations which bridged the decorative and +the pictorial methods, whilst retaining a designed balance with the +printed page. + +Whilst the decoration of books was striving for modern expression in +this country, the Scottish group of artists, working with Patrick +Geddes at Edinburgh, produced many designs which were at once strong +and new, although in some instances based in curious and remote +arabesques of Runic origin. Symbolism was the aim of these artists, +and the clever head-pieces and tail-pieces of _The Evergreen_ were +faithfully drawn “after the manner of Celtic ornament.” Excellent and +more illustrative designs were contributed to the same publication by +Charles H. Mackie, Robert Burns, Pittendrigh Macgillivray and John +Duncan. Later in the period the fantastic work of Jessie M. King came +from Scotland, revealing a novel sense of fanciful design based largely +upon the Japanese and showing also the influence of Beardsley. Ireland +produced no group of Celtic designers, but the work of Althea Giles, +with its curiously exotic symbolism, won the enthusiastic appreciation +of W. B. Yeats, and the poet’s brother, Jack Yeats, began to make those +excellent and delightful wood-blocks which have all the qualities of +designs without losing any of the characteristics of pictures. Nor had +definite symbolism in black and white decorative art many exponents +in this country. The most notable, and he comes hardly within the +definition of a decorator, was W. T. Horton, who, with extraordinary +economy of materials, the briefest of lines and the flattest masses of +black, produced startling revelations of human types in the very few +designs he published. + +A notable contribution to the ornamental book decorations of the period +was made by a group of artists in the Midlands. Originally students +at the Birmingham School of Art, these young men and women, inspired +by the work and ideals of the elder group of the Arts and Crafts +movement, worked diligently within the limits of conventional design. +They discountenanced any book illustrations of a realistic type by +relegating these to the portfolio or the picture frame. Many books +of fairy tales, old romances and poetry were decorated by them, with +varying success, and their aims and aspirations were set forth in a +magazine of their own, called _The Quest_. William Morris thought +so highly of the Birmingham School of decorators that he engaged three +of its draughtsmen, E. H. New, C. M. Gere and Arthur Gaskin, to design +illustrations for some of the Kelmscott Press books. In the main the +artists of this school had little connection with modern life. The +bulk of their designs were deliberately archaic, being based upon +the work of the fifteenth and sixteenth century wood-engravers, and +what modern spirit they possessed was little more than an echo of the +Pre-Raphaelite movement and its associates and dependants. Among the +more notable members of the group, besides the three artists named +above, were Inigo Thomas, Henry Payne, L. Fairfax Muckley, Bernard +Sleigh, Mary Newill, Celia Levetus and Mrs Arthur Gaskin. There can +be small doubt, however, that the most satisfying and most original +draughtsman of the group was E. H. New. His studies of old streets and +buildings united the ideas of book decoration and illustration in a +successful and altogether pleasing way, and they remain something more +than the expressions of a revived method of decoration. + +The revival of conventional book decoration did not pass unchallenged, +as may be imagined at a time when there were so many vigorous black +and white artists of all types striving for recognition. One of the +most authoritative and most reasonable pronouncements of the opposition +was that made by Joseph Pennell in the 1897 edition of _Pen Drawing and +Pen Draughtsmen_. “Decoration is appropriateness,” he wrote, “and it +really makes no difference whether it is realistic or conventional, so +long as it improves the appearance of the page. But at the same time +I consider the modern thoroughly developed realistic work in its best +form superior to that of the old men, because it shows most plainly the +advances we have made in knowledge and technique.... Nowhere for the +moment will such a statement be questioned, except in this country. +But here, within the last thirty years, people have been continuously +taught to believe that book decoration, like all other art work, to +be artistic must have a spiritual, moral, social, political, literary +or sixteenth-century value, while beauty of line and perfection of +execution have been subordinated to these qualities; as a result the +many pay no attention to the real artistic merits or defects of a +drawing, but simply consider it from an entirely inartistic standpoint. +The excuse is the elevation of the masses and the reformation of the +classes. Art will never accomplish either of these desirable ends, +its only function being to give pleasure, but this pleasure will be +obtained from good work produced in any fashion. If the work is equally +well, or, as usually happens, better done in a modern style, it will +give more pleasure to a greater number simply because it will be far +more widely understood.” But the distinction was not finally between +realistic and conventional decoration; it was between the ideas of +decoration in the abstract and illustration in the abstract. During the +Nineties there were few naturalistic decorators of books, and this was +due probably to the emphasis which had been laid upon the independence +of all naturalistic art from anything but its own materials and its own +rules of excellence. The problem of filling the space of a book-page in +such a way as to produce harmony and pleasing proportion was therefore +left to the decorative reformers who, to a man, were inspired by a +mediæval idea. The results are to be seen in the archaic but admirably +illustrated books of the time, which, in their own realm of decoration, +are sufficient defences against any criticism that has been, or may be, +passed upon them. + +The other branch of the art was none the less remarkable in its own +sphere, and under conditions of almost unlimited personal freedom in +choice of method it naturally encouraged originality undreamt of (and +seemingly undesired) in the purely decorative schools. Every phase of +life found its pictorial exponents, in spite of the serious limitations +imposed by the introduction of photography into press and book +illustrations. Where the camera could not operate, in for instance the +realm of character study and humour, the modern genius for pen drawing +produced surprising and masterly results. The most notable of these, +and admittedly the finest pen draughtsmanship of the time, were the +drawings of Phil May. + + [Illustration: PHIL MAY + + _By Spy_] + +This universally appreciated artist, born at New Wortley, Leeds, in +1864, was the son of an engineer. His earliest ambition was to be +a jockey, but the wish was not gratified, for when quite a child +he was employed as timekeeper in a foundry. There were theatrical +associations in the family on his mother’s side, and these led to the +boy, whose aptitude with the pencil developed early, being employed +as an assistant scene painter and odd-job boy at a Leeds theatre. +Subsequently he became an actor, playing juvenile parts in a touring +company. At the age of fifteen he set out for London and fortune, +but hardship drove him back to Leeds, where he practically began his +association with pictorial journalism by contributing drawings to a +local paper called _Yorkshire Gossip_. He married at the early age +of nineteen, and again returned to try his fortune in London, where +ill luck greeted him once more. After suffering extreme poverty, a +caricature of his, depicting Bancroft, Irving and Toole leaving the +Garrick Club, which was published by a print-seller in Charing Cross +Road, attracted the attention of Lionel Brough, the actor, who bought +the original and introduced May to the editor of _Society_. This led to +work and opened up avenues for the further development of his career +in the pages of _The St Stephen’s Review_, where some of the best of +his early drawings appeared. But the artist’s health broke down, and he +was forced to leave England for Australia. There he remained from 1885 +to 1888, becoming one of the most popular contributors to _The Sydney +Bulletin_. On his return to Europe he studied art for a while in Paris, +and from there renewed his connection with _The St Stephen’s Review_, +contributing his first popularly successful series of drawings, “The +Parson and the Painter.” This series appeared as a book in 1891. When +he returned to London in 1892 he found himself a famous humorous +artist, and started the immensely popular _Winter Annuals_, which were +published regularly for eleven years. He now contributed drawings +to many papers, including _The Graphic_, _The Daily Graphic_, _The +Pall Mall Budget_, _The Sketch_, _Pick-me-up_, and in 1896 he joined +the staff of _Punch_. Among his more important separate publications +were, _Phil May’s Sketch Book_ (1895); _Guttersnipes_ (1896); _Graphic +Pictures_ (1897); _Fifty Hitherto Unpublished Pen and Ink Sketches_ and +_The Phil May Album_ (1899). During the greater part of this time Phil +May was the undisputed king of pictorial humorists in this country. His +sketches were a characteristic of the period, and probably no other +black and white artist ever won such ungrudging appreciation from +both his brother artists and all classes of the public. So severe a +critic as Whistler said: “Modern Black and White Art could be summed +up in two words--Phil May.” His weekly contributions to _Punch_ came +to be anticipated and discussed as a pleasurable event of the first +order. This high fame was practically achieved and concluded in the +Nineties, for Phil May died in 1903, just before entering his fortieth +year. After his death several volumes of his drawings were published, +including _Sketches from Punch_ and _A Phil May Picture Book_ (1903); +and a _Folio of Caricature Drawings and Sketches_ and _Phil May in +Australia_ (1904). + +The two outstanding qualities of Phil May’s drawings are their +simplicity and their humour. No draughtsman before him had ever +succeeded in expressing so much with such apparent ease and such +economy of means. He translated the brevity of wit into black and +white art, for although he was fundamentally a humorist, and often a +humorist of a very primitive type, the most successful of his drawings +are as witty as they are funny. His capacity for wit is also revealed +in those early caricatures of his, which, if they had been continued, +would have won him fame in another direction. But it is as a humorous +artist that he will be remembered and loved. Not since Charles Keene +had the distinctive qualities of our native humour been caught with +such unerring exactitude and force. At the same time May achieved a +far greater versatility than Keene. His mind ranged over every phase +of the life of his time, and his amazing skill recorded the funniness +of Whitechapel or Mayfair with equal inevitability. The wonderful +simplicity of these drawings augmented their popular success, and it +provoked as well an equally persistent legend about his art, for it +was customary to attribute May’s simplicity of line to the belief that +whilst he was in Australia he was forced to evolve a simple method of +drawing owing to the limitations of local reproductive processes. This +illusion had no basis in fact, for the style was as much the man in +Phil May’s case as in that of any other artist of equal skill. “For +May’s view of life,” wrote his friend and fellow-artist, G. R. Halkett, +“with its sharp emphasis of character, and its expression always of the +type rather than the individual, an overloading of detail would mean, +even in its completeness, a lack of certainty and a halting expression +of his idea. In the result, May’s work was always that of the brilliant +sketcher who records only those essentials which express ‘the soul’ of +the object before him. The accessories he put behind him with no lack +of appreciation, and certainly with no lack of study, because he was +concerned with deeper things, from which, with unerring instinct, he +knew how to discard the merely superfluous.” + + [Illustration: A LECTURE IN STORE + + “_Are_ you comin’ ’ome?” + + “I’ll do ellythikt you _like_ in reason, M’ria--(hic)--but + I _won’t_ come ’ome.” + + _By Phil May_] + +Next to the directness of his appeal the easy familiarity of his +humour made him universally acceptable. It was fundamental, primitive +and native humour, reflecting feelings which exist in most adults +without respect to class or opinion. And above all it was easier of +acceptance because of its whole-hearted geniality and amiable tolerance +of human foibles. It never aroused superior laughter; cynicism was as +absent as attempt to score off the inferiorities of others; one could +laugh and feel comfortable with him, as one could with, say, Charles +Dickens or Dan Leno. Phil May made his appreciators feel as they +looked and laughed at one of his quaint or preposterous creations that +“there, but for the grace of God, go I.” By making you laugh with him +at something he had observed or imagined he thus forced you to laugh +good-humouredly and with amiable fatalism at yourself. But in spite +of all this undoubted geniality the subject of his humour was more +often than not fitter for tears than laughter. His “guttersnipes,” +his ragamuffins, and all the degraded and unfortunate class-less folk +he delineated with such genius in all sorts of laughable situations, +might just as easily have been the subjects of weeping or, better, of +wrath. In some of the finest of these drawings the humour miscarries +in the triumph of a tragic realism; and in most of his studies of low +life--studies of drunkards, ragged, dirty and half-starved children, +inept old men and unkempt women of all ages--the laughter provoked can +be little more than the protective covering of merriment against the +pains of impotent sympathy. How far Phil May felt this paradox of his +own, and, perhaps, all humour, we do not know; but the misfortunes of +his own life, due mainly to personal foibles, must have developed in +him that kindly and indifferent fatalism which pervades his work. + +The best of the new men worked for _Pick-me-up_ in its early days, +and also for _The Butterfly_ and _Eureka_, and in those publications +realism, satire, humour, cynicism and caricature flourished with all +the spriteliness of a lively age and keen artistic enthusiasm. In many +directions one can trace the influence of Phil May both in technique, +which is chiefly the concern of the draughtsmen themselves, and in +point of view. But many artists developed a _métier_ of their own, and +most of them had sufficient originality of technique and subject to +arouse critical interest. The renaissance of black and white drawing +was not, however, confined to the regular artists in that medium, it +gained supporters from among painters, many of whom, such as Dudley +Hardy, Walter Sickert, Maurice Greiffenhagen and Sidney H. Sime, +doing work which held its own among the best work of the regular pen +and pencil draughtsmen. And in this connection the long series of +lithographic portraits by William Rothenstein[10] must be remembered, +and the early line-drawn caricatures of Max Beerbohm. Cecil Aldin was +contributing clever animal studies in wash to the popular illustrated +journals, and etchers like Joseph Pennell and painter-etchers like +Alfonse Legros and William Strang made incursions into the popular +realms of black and white illustrations; and even so essential a +colourist as Charles Conder came under the same spell. + +Variety was a marked characteristic of the black and white art of +the Nineties, and it has to be admitted that apart from the two main +schools of illustration--the decorative and the illustrative, which +correspond with the romantic and realistic schools of painting--little +of the work was other than normal, and, save for the circumstances +of the moment, possible during any recent decade. Individual talent, +of course, had its say in all directions, and every manifestation of +genius and skill found appreciators. The list of draughtsmen whose work +is distinctive after the critical winnowing of more than fifteen years, +and, in some instances, twenty, is still impressive, including, as it +does, such names as Raven Hill, C. E. Brock, F. H. Townsend, G. R. +Halkett, Frank L. Emanuel, H. R. Millar, E. J. Sullivan, R. Spence, O. +Eckhardt, A. S. Hartrick, Gilbert James, J. W. T. Manuel, Hilda Cowham, +E. T. Reed, Charles Pears, Patten Wilson and Bernard Partridge, all of +whom either published their first work during the decade or produced +such good work as to give them repute. And in addition to this varied +array of ability newer men were also coming forward. Among these may +be named Henry Ospovat, Carton Moore Park, Gordon Craig, Dion Clayton +Calthrop and Joseph Simpson, each of whom published their early work +at the close of the period, but whose main work in varied directions +belongs to succeeding decades. + + [Illustration: THE BANKS OF THE STYX + + _By S. H. Sime_] + +All the ideas and “movements” of the time had their devotees among +the black and white artists--decadence in Aubrey Beardsley, realism +in Phil May, Raven Hill and J. W. T. Manuel; romanticism in Maurice +Greiffenhagen, and that urbanity which I have dealt with under the +heading of “The New Dandyism,” in Max Beerbohm, Dion Clayton Calthrop +and others. Besides these phases there were several artists who +combined the realistic and romantic points of view in their work, and, +in the true spirit of the moment’s complex intellectualism, added to +it that cynicism and doubt of convention which characterises so much +of modern thought. Chief among these artists stands Sydney H. Sime, +whose contributions to _Pick-me-up_, _The Butterfly_, _Eureka_ and _The +Idler_ reveal one of the most original and most gifted artists of the +time. + +All the varieties of _fin de siècle_ black and white drawing found +a capable and prodigal exponent in this artist, who was equally at +home with pen, pencil or brush. Few artists of the time had his +versatility, and still fewer his mental range. His line drawings +illustrating “Jingle’s” theatrical notes in _Pick-me-up_ reveal not +only a draughtsman of distinction, but an exact observer of life, and +a humorist to boot; some of his covers for _Eureka_, particularly the +“White-eyed Kaffir,” prove that he might have won fame as a poster +designer had he wished, whilst his little landscapes in the medium of +wash, which appeared from time to time in _The Butterfly_, have all the +qualities of fine pastel-work. But the phase of Sime’s work which most +nearly expresses a distinctive mood of the period is that which reveals +him as a sardonic critic of humanity and conventional faith. + +From time to time he published drawings in _Pick-me-up_, and elsewhere, +which represented a new type of caricature for this country. He could, +and did, caricature personality in the traditional manner; but, +interesting as these works proved to be, they were not sufficiently +distinctive to command more than passing attention. His outstanding +work in caricature was independent of personality. It did not pass +satiric or humorous comment upon this or that man of note; it said +its say about man as man, and about man’s most cherished ideas and +beliefs. Sime once described caricature as in the nature of a sarcastic +remark, and there is sarcasm enough in these irreverent drawings of +his. But neither sarcasm nor irreverence is their aim or outcome. They +are obviously the work of an artist and thinker, of one who did not +choose to mask his contempt of human weakness. His satires of Heaven +and Hell, funny as they are, do not end as jokes. He sees in these +popular conceptions of the hereafter mere substitutes for thought and +imagination and courageous living, and his attitude resembles that of +Rudyard Kipling in “Tomlinson,” which work, significantly enough, he +desired above all things to illustrate, although he never produced more +than two or three drawings towards that end. + +The restless spirit of the time thus found varied expression in its +black and white art. From Phil May’s laughter at tragedy to Sime’s +laughter at humanity is a far cry; and it is still further to Aubrey +Beardsley’s decorated cynicism. Yet each point of view is typical of +the period, each in its way an expression of that thirst for reality +which characterised the whole art work of the decade. + +In the work of no single artist was a final interpretation of reality +attained. The art of the time was perhaps too personal for that; just +as it was too personal for work within prescribed conventions or +formalities. The age favoured experiment and adventure, and it even +looked not unkindly upon the various whims of the inquisitive, on the +assumption doubtless that discovery was as often the result of accident +as of design. In this large tolerance the spirit of renaissance worked +through mind and imagination inspiring artists with a new confidence +in themselves and courage to take risks. The results were not always +happy; but that does not make the spirit in which the risks were taken +less admirable, for those who make great effort contribute to life as +well as those who achieve. + + + + + INDEX + + + _About the Theatre_, by William Archer, 207 + + _Academy, The_, 169–170 + + Achurch, Janet, 207–208 + + Adams, Francis, 34 + + Addison, Joseph, 41, 121 + + “A.E.” (see George Russell) + + Æschylus, 167 + + Æsthetic movement, 28, 67 + + _Ahab and Jezebel_, by Oscar Wilde, 80 + + Albert, Prince, 100 + + Aldin, Cecil, 290 + + Allen, Grant, 21, 28–29, 35, 39, 40, 44, 131, 147–148, 151–152, 216 + + _Almanack of Twelve Sports_, by W. E. Henley, illustrated by + William Nicholson, 274 + + _Almayer’s Folly_, by Joseph Conrad, 225 + + “An Artist in Attitudes,” 81 + + Angelo, Michael, 139 + + _Anthem of Earth_, by Francis Thompson, 175–176 + + Archer, Charles, 207 + + Archer, William, 157–158, 205, 207, 208, 213 + + _À Rebours_, by J. K. Huysmans, 28, 59, 61–62 + + _Arms and the Man_, by Bernard Shaw, 194 + + Arnold, Matthew, 128 + + Art Workers’ Guild, 246 + + _Arts and Crafts Essays_, 245, 256 + + Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, 246 + + Arts and Crafts Exhibition, 253 + + Arts and Crafts movement, 244–247, 267, 280, 284 + + Ashbee, C. R., 265 + + _Auld Licht Idylls_, by J. M. Barrie, 224 + + _Autobiography of a Boy, The_, by G. S. Street, 41, 67–69, 228 + + Aveling, Eleanor Marx, 207 + + _Aylwin_, by Theodore Watts-Dunton, 39 + + + Bailey, Philip James, 38 + + Balestier, Wolcott, 232 + + _Ballad of an Artist’s Wife, The_, by John Davidson, 187 + + _Ballad of a Nun, The_, by John Davidson, 187 + + _Ballad of Heaven, A_, by John Davidson, 188 + + _Ballad of Hell, The_, by John Davidson, 187 + + _Ballad of Reading Gaol, The_, by Oscar Wilde, 80, 82–83, 88–89 + + _Ballads and Songs_, by John Davidson, 178, 181 + + Ballantyne & Hanson, 265 + + Balzac, 74, 87 + + _Baptist Lake_, by John Davidson, 178 + + Baring-Gould, S., 250 + + Baring, Maurice, 48 + + Barker, Granville, 214–215 + + Barlow, Jane, 225 + + _Barrack-Room Ballads_, by Rudyard Kipling, 232, 241 + + Barrie, J. M., 35, 40, 42, 224–225, 227–228 + + Bashkirtseff, Marie, 206 + + _Battle of the Bays, The_, by Owen Seaman, 159 + + _Bauble Shop, The_, by Henry Arthur Jones, 209 + + Baudelaire, Charles, 61, 110, 111, 136, 143, 160, 196, 201 + + Beardsley, Aubrey, 17, 21, 23, 34, 37, 45, 46, 47, 48, 50, 59, 60, + 63, 76, 91–104, 111, 114–115, 117, 130–131, 137–138, 142, 143, + 186, 268, 273, 280, 282, 290–292 + + _Beardsley, The Last Letters of Aubrey_, 94 + + Beardsley, Miss Mabel, 92 + + “Beardsley Craze,” 93 + + Beardsley woman, the, 46, 93 + + _Beccarius_, by Max Beerbohm, 117 + + Becke, Louis, 225 + + Beeching, H. C., 159 + + Beerbohm, Max, 17, 20, 25, 30, 35, 41, 45, 48, 50, 97, 102, 108, + 112, 116, 117–125, 130, 197, 229, 291 + + _Beerbohm, The Works of Max_, 41, 118–120, 123 + + Beers Company, the De, 238 + + Beggarstaff Brothers, 34, 274–275 + + Bell, R. Anning, 47, 283 + + _Beltaine_, 150 + + _Bending of the Bough, The_, by George Moore, 149 + + Benson, Arthur Christopher, 40, 47 + + Benson, E. F., 224 + + Benson, F. R., 212 + + Benson, W. A. S., 251 + + Berneval-sur-Mer, 80 + + Bernhardt, Sarah, 76 + + Besant, Annie, 26 + + _Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush_, by Ian Maclaren, 225 + + Binyon, Laurence, 45, 51, 109, 159 + + Birmingham School of Art, 284–285 + + Björnson, Björnstjerne, 133, 209 + + Black, William, 39 + + _Black Cat, The_, 209 + + Blake, William, 50, 91, 99, 167, 174 + + Bland, Hubert, 26 + + Blatchford, Robert, 24, 44 + + Blind, Mathilde, 50 + + Blomfield, Reginald, 251 + + Bodley, G. F., 251 + + Bodley Head, The, 41, 45, 76, 119, 186 + + _Bogland Studies_, by Jane Barlow, 225 + + _Book Bills of Narcissus, The_, by Richard le Gallienne, 226 + + “Bon Mot” series, 103 + + Booth, Charles, 44 + + Bottomley, Gordon, 51 + + _Brand_, by Henrik Ibsen, 209 + + Brandes, George, 133 + + Brangwyn, Frank, 268, 270, 276, 277–278 + + Bridges, Robert, 39 + + Brieux, Eugene, 201 + + British South Africa Company, 238 + + Brock, C. E., 290 + + Brooke, Emma Frances, 224 + + Brooke, Stopford, 39 + + Brown, Ford Madox, 246, 272 + + Browning, Robert, 25, 38, 128, 157 + + _Bruce: a Drama_, by John Davidson, 178 + + Buchanan, Robert, 128 + + Bullen, Frank T., 225 + + Burne-Jones, Sir Edward, 33, 100, 103, 259–260, 273, 282 + + Burns, John, 26 + + Burns, Robert, 283 + + Butler, Samuel, 203 + + _Butterfly, The_, 36, 289, 291 + + Byron, Lord, 57, 158 + + + Cadenhead, John, 150 + + _Cæsar and Cleopatra_, by Bernard Shaw, 195 + + Café Royale, 58 + + Caine, Hall, 39, 218, 226 + + Caldecott, Randolph, 281 + + Calthrop, Dion Clayton, 290–291 + + Cameron, D. Y., 270 + + Campbell, Mrs Patrick, 213 + + _Candida_, by Bernard Shaw, 194 + + Canterbury Poets, 52 + + _Canterville Ghost, The_, by Oscar Wilde, 74 + + _Captain Brassbound’s Conversion_, by Bernard Shaw, 194 + + _Captains Courageous_, by Rudyard Kipling, 232 + + _Caricatures of Twenty-five Gentlemen_, by Max Beerbohm, 124 + + Carlyle, Thomas, 203 + + Carpenter, Edward, 34, 44, 48 + + Carroll, Lewis, 227 + + _Carthusian, The_, 117 + + Carton, R. C., 214 + + _Case of Rebellious Susan, The_, by Henry Arthur Jones, 212 + + _Cashel Byron’s Profession_, by Bernard Shaw, 194 + + Caslon, 255 + + Caxton, William, 260 + + Celtic revival, 42, 147–156 + + _Celtic Twilight, The_, by W. B. Yeats, 42, 149, 155 + + Chamberlain, Joseph, 151, 238–239 + + _Chameleon, The_, 36 + + Champneys, Basil, 251 + + Chant, Mrs Ormiston, 24 + + _Chap-Book, The_, 118 + + Charrington, Charles, 207–208 + + Chesterton, G. K., 112 + + _Child of the Jago, A_, by Arthur Morrison, 43, 130, 216 + + _Children of the Ghetto_, by Israel Zangwill, 225 + + Chiswick Press, 255, 257 + + _Chord, The_, 36 + + _Christ in Hades_, by Stephen Phillips, 158, 164 + + _Christmas Day in the Workhouse_, by G. R. Sims, 187 + + _Christmas Garland, A_, by Max Beerbohm, 120 + + _Chronicle, The Daily_, 24, 80 + + _City of Dreadful Night, The_, by Rudyard Kipling, 232 + + _Clarion, The_, 24 + + Clausen, George, 270 + + Clifford, Mrs W. K., 224 + + Cobden-Sanderson, T. J., 251, 253, 260, 266 + + Cockerell, Douglas, 251 + + Coleridge, S. T., 58, 158 + + Collins, Lottie, 31 + + _Colour of Life, The_, by Alice Meynell, 139, 145 + + Colvin, Sydney, 39 + + Comte, 60 + + _Comus_, by John Milton, 58 + + Conder, Charles, 35, 37, 48, 50, 131, 270, 273–274 + + _Confessions of a Young Man_, by George Moore, 63 + + Conrad, Joseph, 40, 50, 225 + + Coppée, François, 178 + + Corelli, Marie, 225 + + Couch, Arthur Quiller, 35, 225 + + _Countess Kathleen, The_, by W. B. Yeats, 41, 149, 156 + + _Courting of Dinah Shadd, The_, by Rudyard Kipling, 232 + + Crackanthorpe, Hubert, 35, 47, 131, 142, 144, 220, 223 + + Craig, Gordon, 51, 207, 290 + + Crane, Stephen, 229 + + Crane, Walter, 33, 48, 251, 280–283 + + Crashaw, Richard, 166 + + _Critic as Artist, The_, by Oscar Wilde, 75 + + Crockett, Alexander, 177 + + Crockett, S. R., 42, 150, 224 + + Crosland, T. W. H., 51 + + _Cruelties of Prison Life_, by Oscar Wilde, 80 + + Custance, Olive, 48, 159 + + Cyrenaicism, the New, 59 + + + _Daily Express_ (Dublin), _The_, 150 + + _Daily Graphic, The_, 287 + + _Daily Mail, The_, 52 + + _Daily Telegraph, The_, 208 + + Dalmon, Charles, 48, 159 + + D’Annunzio, Gabriele, 128 + + Dante, 272 + + D’Arcy, Ella, 48 + + Darwinian idea, 190 + + D’Aurevilly, Barbey, 13, 110–111, 114–115 + + Davidson, Alexander, 177 + + Davidson, John, 20, 35, 41, 45, 47, 91, 106, 129, 131, 158, + 177–192, 234 + + Davies, William H., 170 + + _Day’s Work, The_, by Rudyard Kipling, 232 + + Decadents, The, 36 + + _Decameron, The_, by Boccaccio, 102 + + _Decay of Lying, The_, by Oscar Wilde, 75 + + _Decorative Illustration_, by Walter Crane, 280 + + _Deemster, The_, by Hall Caine, 225 + + _Defence of Cosmetics, A_, by Max Beerbohm, 117 + + _Defence of the Revival of Printing_, by Charles Ricketts, 261 + + Degas, 203 + + _Degeneration_, by Max Nordan, 195 + + Dent, J. M., 93 + + _Departmental Ditties_, by Rudyard Kipling, 231, 232 + + _De Profundis_, by Oscar Wilde, 80–81, 88 + + De Quincey, Thomas, 167 + + _Devil’s Disciple, The_, by Bernard Shaw, 195 + + _Dial, The_, 257, 260, 261 + + _Diarmuid and Grania_, by W. B. Yeats and George Moore, 149 + + _Diary of Lady Willoughby_, by Hannah Mary Rathbone, 255 + + Dickens, Charles, 33, 43, 107, 217, 289 + + Dionysos, 58 + + Dobson, Austin, 39 + + _Doll’s House, A_, by Henrik Ibsen, 208–209 + + _Dome, The_, 36, 50–51 + + “Don’t Read This if You Want to be Happy To-day,” by Oscar Wilde, + 80 + + D’Orsay, Count, 122 + + Douglas, Lord Alfred, 76, 159 + + Douglas, Sir George, 150 + + Doves Press, 255, 266 + + Dow, T. Millie, 270 + + Dowie, Menie Muriel, 224 + + Dowden, Edward, 39 + + Dowson, Ernest, 35, 48, 58, 70, 91, 158, 162, 166 + + Doyle, Arthur Conan, 40, 225 + + _Dream Days_, by Kenneth Graham, 227 + + _Dream Tryst_, by Francis Thompson, 167 + + _Dublin Review, The_, 167–168 + + _Duchess of Padua, The_, by Oscar Wilde, 75 + + Du Maurier, George, 39, 67, 226, 279 + + Duncan, John, 150, 283 + + Durer, Albrecht, 281 + + + _Eagle and the Serpent, The_, 129–130 + + _Early Italian Poets_, by D. G. Rossetti, 281 + + _Ebb-Tide, The_, by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne, 225 + + Echegaray, 209 + + Eckhardt, O., 290 + + Egerton, George, 45, 47, 129, 143, 144, 217, 224 + + Eglinton, John, 42, 149 + + _Elder Conklin and Other Stories_, by Frank Harris, 43 + + Eliot, George, 217 + + Ellis, Havelock, 50, 129, 221 + + _Elsmere, Robert_, by Mrs Humphry Ward, 224 + + Emanuel, Frank L., 290 + + Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 132 + + _Emperor and Galilean_, by Henrik Ibsen, 208 + + _Endymion_, by John Keats, 58 + + _Enemy of the People, An_, by Henrik Ibsen, 209–210 + + _English Episodes_, by Frederick Wedmore, 39 + + _English Illustrated Magazine_, 281 + + _English People, Modern History of_, by R. H. Gretton, 53 + + _Episodes_, by G. S. Street, 144 + + Eragny Press, 255 + + Esperance Girls’ Club, 250 + + Essex House Press, 255, 265–266 + + _Esther Waters_, by George Moore, 43, 63, 130, 216, 228–230 + + _Eureka_, 36, 289, 291 + + Euripides, 212 + + Evans, Frederick H., 93 + + _Evelyn Innes_, by George Moore, 230 + + _Eve of St Agnes, The_, by John Keats, 58 + + _Evergreen, The_, 36, 43, 150, 283 + + + _Fabian Essays in Socialism_, 194 + + _Fabianism and the Empire_, by Bernard Shaw, 195 + + Fabian Society, the, 26, 186, 194, 200, 209 + + _Faerie Queene_, by Edmund Spenser, 281 + + Farrar, Archdeacon, 38 + + _Fathers and Children_, by Ivan Turgenev, 132 + + _Fat Woman, The_, by Aubrey Beardsley, 101–102 + + Fell, H. Granville, 283 + + Fenn, Frederick, 214 + + Fergusson, John Duncan, 35, 270 + + _Feverel, The Ordeal of Richard_, by George Meredith, 123 + + Field, Michael, 45, 159, 209 + + Fitzgerald, Edward, 135 + + _Fleet Street Eclogues_, by John Davidson, 41, 106, 178 + + _Fleet Street Eclogues_, by John Davidson (second series), 178 + + _Fleet Street and Other Poems_, by John Davidson, 178 + + Fleming, George, 144 + + _Fleshly School of Poetry, The_, by Robert Buchanan, 128 + + _Fortnightly Review, The_, 28, 74, 147 + + Fletcher, A. 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H., 36, 37, 270, 280, 290, 291–292 + + Simpson, Joseph, 290 + + _Sinner’s Comedy, The_, by John Oliver Hobbs, 224 + + _Sister Songs_, by Francis Thompson, 168 + + _Sketch, The_, 118, 287 + + Sleigh, Bernard, 284 + + _Smith: a Tragic Farce_, by John Davidson, 178 + + Smithers, Leonard, 35, 45 + + Social Democratic Federation, 26 + + Socialism, 247–248 + + _Socialism in England_, by Sidney Webb, 44 + + Socialist Movement, 44 + + Socialist Party, the British, 26 + + _Soldiers Three_, by Rudyard Kipling, 231 + + _Some Emotions and a Moral_, by John Oliver Hobbes, 144 + + _Soul of Man, The_, by Oscar Wilde, 27, 88, 89, 134 + + South African War, 53 + + _Speaker, The_, 178, 267 + + Spence, R., 290 + + Spencer, Herbert, 38, 203 + + Spenser, Edmund, 251 + + _Sphinx, The_, by Oscar Wilde, 74, 82–83, 260, 263 + + _Sphinx without a Secret, The_, by Oscar Wilde, 74 + + _Spirit Lamp, The_, 22 + + Spurgeon, Charles, 38 + + Stage Society, 194, 209, 214 + + _Stalky & Co._, by Rudyard Kipling, 232 + + _Star, The_, 24, 193 + + Stead, W. T., 24 + + Steele, Sir Richard, 41 + + Steer, Wilson, 35, 47, 270 + + Steevens, G. W., 40 + + Stephen, Leslie, 38 + + Stephens, Riccardo, 150 + + Stevenson, Robert Louis, 38, 135, 225, 227 + + _Stickit Minister, The_, by S. R. Crockett, 224 + + Stirner, Max, 132 + + _Stones of Venice, The_, by John Ruskin, 246 + + _Story of an African Farm, The_, by Ralph Iron (Olive Schreiner), + 224 + + _Story of the Gadsbys, The_, by Rudyard Kipling, 232 + + _Story of the Glittering Plain, The_, by William Morris, 39, 258, + 259 + + _Story of the Sundering Flood, The_, by William Morris, 39 + + Strang, William, 290 + + Street, G. S., 41, 46, 48, 68–69, 91, 112, 144 + + _Strike at Arlingford, The_, by George Moore, 209 + + Strindberg, August, 210, 212 + + _Studio, The_, 36, 93 + + _Study in Temptations, A_, by John Oliver Hobbs, 224 + + Sudermann, Hermann, 209–210 + + Sullivan, E. J., 47, 280, 290 + + Superman, 190 + + Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 38, 58, 74, 157, 160, 162 + + _Sydney Bulletin, The_, 287 + + _Symbolist Movement in Literature_, by Arthur Symons, 56 + + Symbolists, the, 59, 244 + + Symonds, John Addington, 39, 262 + + Symons, Arthur, 35, 36, 42, 47, 48, 55–56, 70, 81, 85, 91, 95, + 96–97, 106, 112–114, 130, 134, 142, 159, 161–162 + + Synge, J. M., 42, 87 + + + _Tables of the Law, The_, by W. B. Yeats, 156 + + Tabley, Lord de, 262 + + _Tales of Mean Streets_, by Arthur Morrison, 43, 130, 216 + + _Tales of Unrest_, by Joseph Conrad, 225 + + _Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay_, 31 + + Temple Classics, 52 + + _Ten O’Clock_, by J. McNeill Whistler, 40, 123 + + Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 37, 100, 128, 157, 220, 281 + + _Tess of the D’Urbervilles_, by Thomas Hardy, 39, 40 + + _Testament of John Davidson, The_, by John Davidson, 179–181 + + _Testament of a Vivisector, The_, by John Davidson, 179 + + Thackeray, William Makepeace, 217 + + _The Testament of a Man Forbid_, by John Davidson, 179, 189 + + _The Testament of an Empire Builder_, by John Davidson, 179 + + _Theatrocrat, The_, by John Davidson, 179 + + Theosophy, 149 + + Theosophical movement, 132 + + Thomas, Inigo, 284 + + Thompson, Francis, 45, 51, 91, 131, 158, 166–176 + + _Thompson, The Life of Francis_, by Everard Meynell, 171 + + _Three Plays for Puritans_, by Bernard Shaw, 195 + + _Thus Spake Zarathustra_, by Friedrich Nietzsche, 129 + + _Time Machine, The_, by H. G. Wells, 225 + + _Times, The_, 34 + + _To-Day_, 36, 47 + + Todhunter, John, 209 + + Tolstoy, Leo, 128, 203, 212, 250 + + _To-morrow_, 36, 120 + + “Tomlinson,” by Rudyard Kipling, 292 + + Toulouse-Lautrec, 274 + + _Towards Democracy_, by Edward Carpenter, 44 + + Town planning, 254 + + Townsend, F. H., 290 + + _Trades Unionism, The History of_, by Sidney and Beatrice Webb, 44 + + Traill, H. D., 21, 39, 227 + + Tree, Herbert Beerbohm, 76, 210, 211 + + Trench, Herbert, 159 + + _Trilby_, by George du Maurier, 39, 226 + + _Triumph of Mammon, The_, by John Davidson, 179 + + Tupper, Martin, 38 + + Turgenev, 128, 132 + + _Twisting of the Rope, The_, by Douglas Hyde, 149 + + _Two Essays on the Remnant_, by John Eglington, 149 + + Tyndall, John, 38 + + + _Under the Deodars_, by Rudyard Kipling, 232 + + _Under the Hill_, by Aubrey Beardsley, 50, 59, 63, 101–102, + 114–115, 138, 228 + + _Unhistorical Pastoral, An_, by John Davidson, 178 + + Unicorn Press, 45 + + _Unicorn, The_, 118 + + Unwin, Fisher, 45 + + Upward, Allen, 40 + + + Vachell, H. A., 40 + + Vale Press, 51, 255, 261–263, 281 + + _Vampire, The_, by Rudyard Kipling, 235 + + _Vanity_, 118 + + _Vanity Fair_, 217 + + Vaughan, Henry, 166 + + Vedrenne-Barker repertoire season, 195, 214–215 + + _Vera: or the Nihilists_, by Oscar Wilde, 75 + + _Verdigris, Baron_, by Jocelyn Quilp, 21 + + Verhaeren, Emil, 50 + + Verlaine, Paul, 50, 58, 61, 63, 135, 274 + + Victor Hugo, 57, 58 + + Victoria, Queen, 237 + + _Vignettes_, by Hubert Crackanthorpe, 142 + + _Vistas_, by William Sharp, 30 + + Vizetelly, Ernest, 42 + + Voltaire, 201 + + Voysey, C. F. A., 251 + + _Voysey Inheritance, The_, by Granville Barker, 214 + + + Wagner, Richard, 198, 203 + + _Wagnerians, The_, by Aubrey Beardsley, 101 + + Walker, Emery, 251, 256–257, 266 + + Walkley, A. B., 35, 206–207 + + Wallace, Alfred Russel, 38 + + Wallas, Graham, 26 + + _Wanderings of Oisin, The_, by W. B. Yeats, 148 + + _War of the Worlds, The_, by H. G. Wells, 225 + + Ward, Mrs Humphry, 26, 224 + + _Washer of the Ford, The_, by “Fiona Macleod,” 150 + + _Water of the Wondrous Isles, The_, by William Morris, 39 + + Watson, William, 34, 40, 46, 47, 158, 163 + + Watteau, 94, 100, 274 + + Watts, George Frederick, 33, 99, 268, 277 + + Watts-Dunton, Theodore, 39 + + Waugh, Arthur, 47, 218–220 + + Webb, Beatrice, 44 + + Webb, Sydney, 26, 44, 200 + + Webb, Stephen, 251 + + Wedmore, Frederick, 38, 39, 50, 224 + + _Wee Willie Winkie_, by Rudyard Kipling, 232 + + _Well at the World’s End, The_, by William Morris, 39 + + Wells, H. G., 27, 34, 35, 44, 224, 225, 228–229, 274 + + Welsh Literary Movement, 42 + + _Wessex Poems_, by Thomas Hardy, 39 + + Weyman, Stanley J., 40, 226 + + _What is Art?_ by Leo Tolstoy, 250 + + Wheeler & Co., A. H., 231 + + _Wheels of Chance, The_, by H. G. Wells, 224 + + _When the Sleeper Wakes_, by H. G. Wells, 225 + + Whibley, Charles, 41 + + Whistler, James McNeill, 34, 40, 47, 74, 85, 98, 107, 111, 123, + 141, 143, 220, 245, 270, 277, 287 + + _Whistler, The Life of James McNeill_, by E. R. and J. Pennell, 98 + + _White Company, The_, by A. Conan Doyle, 226 + + Whiteing, Richard, 40, 43, 44, 224 + + Whitman, Walt, 85 + + Whitten, Wilfred, 169 + + Whittingham, Charles, 255 + + _Widowers’ Houses_, by Bernard Shaw, 44, 194–196 + + Wilde, Oscar, 21, 22, 25, 27–28, 34, 45, 53–54, 58, 63, 66–68, 70, + 72–90, 91, 98, 102–103, 105, 107–108, 111–112, 114, 131–132, 134, + 136–137, 138–139, 142, 143, 144–145, 146, 195, 205–206, 210, 212, + 228, 244, 260, 263 + + _Wilde, Oscar, The Story of an Unhappy Friendship_, by R. H. + Sherard, 72 + + Wilson, Edgar, 36, 283 + + Wilson, Henry, 251 + + Wilson, Patten, 290 + + _Window in Thrums, A_, by J. M. Barrie, 224 + + Wolseley, Viscount, 237 + + _Woman and Her Son, A_, by John Davidson, 189 + + _Woman Who Did, The_, by Grant Allen, 40, 131, 216 + + _Woman Covered with Jewels, The_, by Oscar Wilde, 76 + + _Woman of No Importance, A_, by Oscar Wilde, 21, 76, 209, 212 + + _Woman’s World, The_, 74 + + _Women’s Tragedies_, by George Fleming, 144 + + _Wonderful Mission of Earl Lavender, The_, by John Davidson, 179, + 181 + + _Wonderful Visit, The_, by H. G. Wells, 224 + + _Wood Beyond the World, The_, by William Morris, 39 + + Woods, Margaret L., 159 + + Worde, Wenkyn de, 260–261 + + Wordsworth, William, 58, 158, 174 + + _World, The_, 193 + + Wratislaw, Theodore, 48, 159 + + _Wreckage_, By Hubert Crackanthrope, 144 + + _Wrecker, The_, by Lloyd Osbourne and Robert Louis Stevenson, 225 + + + Yeats, Jack B., 283 + + Yeats, R.H.A., J. B., 152 + + Yeats, William Butler, 35, 42, 48, 51, 56, 71, 141, 149, 150–156, + 158, 163–164, 283 + + _Yellow Aster, The_, by Iota, 47, 139 + + _Yellow Book, The_, 17, 23, 25, 34, 40, 41, 45–46, 49, 52, 91, 93, + 98, 118, 139, 178, 186, 219, 228 + + “Yellow, The Boom in,” 46–47 + + “Yellow Nineties,” the, 34 + + “Yellow Press,” the, 23, 52 + + _Yet Again_, by Max Beerbohm, 120, 123 + + _You Never Can Tell_, by Bernard Shaw, 194 + + + Zangwill, Israel, 35, 40, 211, 225, 227 + + Zola, Emile, 27, 42, 128, 130, 201, 203, 216 + + _Zuleika Dobson_, By Max Beerbohm, 120, 123 + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] See _A Modern History of the English People_, by R. H. Gretton. + +[2] This was true in 1913, but now (1922) a new generation of +urchins has arisen in Boulogne and other French towns who know not +_Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay_. This famous ditty has been declassed by +_Tipperairie_. + +[3] “The Decadent Movement in Literature.” By Arthur Symons. +_Harper’s New Monthly Magazine_, November 1893. + +[4] The work of bringing together the complete edition of Ibsen in +English was begun in 1888, but long before a complete translation of +the works had been dreamt of there was much interest in Ibsen’s plays +in this country, and _Emperor and Galilean_ was the first of the +plays to be translated into English, by Catherine Ray, in 1876. + +[5] Mrs Patrick Campbell. + +[6] “Dolores,” by Algernon Charles Swinburne. + +[7] _The Country of the Blind and Other Stories_, by H. G. Wells +(1912). + +[8] The first Kelmscott issue of this book was in quarto. + +[9] _The House of the Wolfings_ was printed in 1889, and _The +Roots of the Mountains_ in 1890. + +[10] For an account of these lithographs see “The Lithographic +Portraits of Will Rothenstein” in the author’s _Romance and +Reality_. + + +Transcriber’s Notes: + +1. Obvious printers’, punctuation and spelling errors have been +corrected silently. + +2. Where hyphenation is in doubt, it has been retained as in the +original. + +3. Some hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions of the same words have +been retained as in the original. + +4. Italics are shown as _xxx_. + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78936 *** |