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._”