(_By Max Mereboom._)
[Illustration: _Picture by Our Own Yellow-Booky Daubaway Weirdsley,
intended as a Puzzle Picture to preface of Juvenile Poems, or as
nothing in particular._]
"Linger longer, LUCY,
Linger longer, LOO.
How I'd like to linger longer,
Linger longer, LOO!"--_Old Ballad._
I suppose there is no one that has not wished, from Time to Time, that
someone else had lived in another Age than his own. I myself have
often felt that it would have been nice to live in 1894; to have seen
the "_Living Pictures_" at the old _Empire_, to have strained my Eyes
for a glimpse of _Mrs. Patrick Campbell_, broken my Cane applauding
_May Yohé_, and listened to the _Blue Hungarians_ while dining, on a
Sunday, at that quaint old Tavern _the Savoy_. At that time the
Beauties from New York had not quite lost their Vogue. CHRISTOPHER
COLUMBUS, who discovered the United States, left it to the Prince of
WALES to invent their inhabitants: personally, I am more implected
with their Botany; and am, indeed, at this moment, engaged in a study
of the Trees in America. Much of this remote Period must remain mobled
in the Mists of Antiquity, but we know that about then flourished the
Sect that was to win for itself the Title of the "_Decadents_." What
exactly this Title signified I suppose no two entomologists will
agree. But we may learn from the Caricatures of the day what the
_Decadents_ were in outward semblance; from the Lampoons what was
their mode of life. Nightly they gathered at any of the Theatres where
the plays of Mr. WILDE were being given. Nightly, the stalls were
fulfilled by Row upon Row of neatly-curled Fringes surmounting
Button-holes of monstrous size. The contrasts in the social Condition
of the time fascinate me. I used to know a boy whose mother was
actually present at the "first night" of _Charley's Aunt_, and became
enamoured of _Mr. Penley_. By such links is one Age joined to another!
I should like to have been at a Private View of the "_New English Art
Club_." There was _Crotchet_, the young Author of the _Mauve
Camellia_; there were _Walter Sickert_, the veteran R.A.; _George
Moore_, the romanticist; _Charles Hawtrey_, the tragedian, and many
another good fellow. The period of 1894 must have been delicious.
Perhaps in my Study I have fallen so deeply beneath the Spell of the
Age, that I have tended to underrate its unimportance. I fancy it was
a Sketch of a Lady with a Mask on, playing the piano in a Cornfield,
in a low dress, with two lighted Candles, and signed "_Aubrey
Weirdsley_," that first impelled me to research.
But to give an accurate account of the Period would need a far less
brilliant Pen than mine; and I look to JEROME K. JEROME and to Mr.
CLEMENT SCOTT.