here i propose to go through a litany of some of my omissions. in essaying to depict the aspects of an age there is always this pitfall, omission, which ambuscades the adventurous spirit. for we who know so little even about ourselves—how can we, without grave impertinence, boldly say i wish to bring back to the mind of others an age dead and gone? everything is so interwoven in life that it is, for example, an unwarranted arbitrariness to discuss the literature of this period without brooding on the black and white art of the time, or the canvases of its painters.
i have worried for some space over aubrey beardsley, but i have not spoken of men like mr. s. h. sime, whose work beardsley so delighted in. probably sidney h. sime’s work in the butterfly, the idler, pick-me-up, eureka, etc., besides his book illustrations, is in some ways the most powerfully imaginative of the period. there has been a beardsley craze, and most assuredly there will be one day a119 sime craze, when collectors have focussed properly the marvellous suggestive power of this artist’s work. unfortunately, scattered up and down old magazines, much of this work is, as it were, lost for the moment like toulouse lautrec’s drawings in papers like le rire. but when it is garnered up in a worthy book of drawings like the beardsley books, the power of sime’s work will be undoubted. fortunately sime is still amongst us, and occasionally a dunsany book brings us fresh evidence of his genius.
again, i have not alluded to edgar wilson’s bizarre and fascinating decorations of submarine life and japonesque figures. like shannon, ricketts, raven hill, and others, he received his early art education at the lambeth school of art. at the end of the eighties he began collecting japanese prints long before beardsley had left school. in fact, edgar wilson was one of the pioneers of the japanese print in this country—a love for the strange which came over to england from france. a typical decorative design of wilson’s20 is ‘in the depths of the sea,’ representing an octopus rampant over a human skull, beneath which are two strange flat fish, and in the background120 a sunken old three-decker with quaintly carved stern and glorious prow. pick-me-up first used his work as it did that of many another young artist, and in its back files much of his best work can be found. for the rambler he did different designs for each issue, which is probably the only redeeming feature about that early harmsworth periodical. the sketch, cassell’s, scribner’s, and above all the idler and the butterfly, are beautified among other papers by his exotic decorations.
20 edgar wilson and his work, by arthur lawrence, the idler, july, 1899.
once more i have not spoken at all of miss althea gyles’s hectic visions which, in her illustrations for wilde’s the harlot’s house, probably reached the acme of the period’s realisation of the weird. she is of course really of the irish symbolists, and not one of the nineties’ group at all; but, in her wilde illustrations, she almost enters the same field as the men of the nineties. her connection, too, with the firm of smithers is another strong excuse for mentioning her work here. in the dome both her drawings and poems appeared, while in the december number for 1898 there is a note on her symbolism by w. b. yeats. in all her drawings the fancy that seems to have such free flight is in reality severely ordered by the designer’s symbolism. sometimes it is merely121 intriguing, as in drawings like ‘the rose of god,’ where a naked woman is spread-eagled against the clouds above a fleet of ships and walled city, while in other designs the symbolism is full of suggestive loveliness, as in ‘noah’s raven.’ ‘the ark floats upon a grey sea under a grey sky, and the raven flutters above the sea. a sea nymph, whose slender swaying body drifting among the grey waters is a perfect symbol of the soul untouched by god or by passion, coils the fingers of one hand about his feet and offers him a ring, while her other hand holds a shining rose under the sea. grotesque shapes of little fishes flit about the rose, and grotesque shapes of larger fishes swim hither and thither. sea nymphs swim through the windows of a sunken town, and reach towards the rose hands covered with rings; and a vague twilight hangs over all.’ this is explained to represent the search of man for the fleshly beauty which is so full of illusions for us all, while the spiritual beauty is ever far away. to this kind of interpretative design oscar wilde’s swan song, the harlot’s house, lends itself admirably, and miss gyles’s black and white work here becomes inspired to the standard of beardsley’s and sime’s best work. the shadow effects illustrating the stanzas,
122
sometimes a clockwork puppet pressed a phantom lover to her breast, sometimes they seemed to try and sing.
sometimes a horrible marionette came out and smoked its cigarette upon the steps like a live thing
must be seen before one can place althea gyles’s drawings in their proper place. it is not a replica of beardsley, it is not a faint far-off imitation of a félicien rops or armand rassenfosse, but something genuinely original in its shadow-graphic use of masses of black on a white ground.
once more, mea culpa, i have paid scant attention to max beerbohm’s caricatures, and i have failed to call attention here to his earlier and later method of work. i have not even spoken of his little paper entitled the spirit of caricature, wherein he discusses the spirit of the art he practises. god forgive me! or yet again what meed of homage have i yet rendered to mr. will rothenstein’s lithographic portraits, which are absolutely a necessity to anyone who would live a while with the shades of these men. take, for example, his liber juniorum, which alone contains lithographed drawings of aubrey beardsley, max beerbohm, and arthur symons. then there are so many others over whose123 achievements i must keep a holy silence, such as mr. charles ricketts and his dial, which was published by the vale press, and to which john gray contributed many poems.
again, there are the colourists of this group, particularly walter sickert and charles conder. the latter, above all, is the colour comrade to beardsley’s black and white. his figures are the lovers of dowson’s verse, his landscapes and world have all those memories of the golden time that haunt the brain of john gray and theodore wratislaw. no note, however short, on the nineties would be complete without a halt for praise of this painter of a strangely coloured dolce far niente. for everything in his work, be it on canvas, silk panel, or dainty fan, is drowsy with the glory of colour (as mr. holbrook jackson admirably says), ‘colour suggesting form, suggesting all corporeal things, suggesting even itself, for conder never more than hints at the vivid possibilities of life, more than a hint might waken his puppets from their laodicean dream.’
whether an idyllic landscape or a fantastic bal masqué of montmartre or an elysian fête galante was his theme, the work itself is always permeated with the spirit of conder. his nude figure ‘pearl,’ his ‘l’oiseau bleu,’ his ‘femme dans une loge au théatre,’ are124 typical of his successful achievements. the ‘fickle love’ fan is but one of the numerous exquisite works he produced in this branch of art; while ‘the masquerade’ is the work of a beardsley-like fancy which could colour like conder.
like his personality, his work suffered from certain unhappy moods, and that is what makes so much of it uneven. born in 1868, a descendant of louis francis roubiliac, the famous sculptor, whose work for the figures of our eighteenth century porcelain factories is so well known, of conder it may be said, as of all artists with french blood in them, when he is successful he is irresistible. he might not be able to draw modern men, but how beautifully he drew the women of his day can be seen in ‘la toilette.’ he delighted, indeed, in designing women wandering in dream gardens, in painting roses and princes charming.
it would be pleasant to travel through this world of delightful dreams, were we not restricted of set purpose to the literary side of the movement. and has it not already been done in mr. frank gibson’s charles conder?
again, some of the publishers who produced the books of these men have their right to something more than scant mention. to mr. elkin mathews, particularly as the first publisher125 of the rhymers’ club books and as the issuer of john gray’s first volume of poetry, bibliophiles owe a debt of gratitude. in the early days of the nineties mr. john lane became associated with him, until the autumn of 1894 witnessed ‘parnassus divided into two peaks.’ later, after the wilde débacle, an extraordinary figure, worthy of a romance, in the person of the late leonard smithers, who was at one time in the legal profession at sheffield, took the field as a publisher by way of h. s. nichols. he was no mere publisher but a man of considerable scholarship, who not only issued but finished the sir richard burton translation of catullus. round him, to a considerable extent, the vanishing group rallied for a little while before death smote them one by one. here is no place to pay due justice to this amiable benvenuto cellini of book printing himself, but it must be remembered his figure bulks largely in the closing scenes. he kept dowson from starvation. beardsley wrote of him as ‘our publisher.’21 he, when others failed, had the courage to126 launch on the english publishing market the released wilde’s now famous ballad of reading gaol. if he did exceed certain rules for himself, he at least took risks to help others. he was no supine battener on the profits of books for young ladies’ seminaries. he was a printer, and his bankruptcy may be said to have closed the period.
21 it is interesting that in an unpublished letter of beardsley’s to smithers when the latter was intending to produce the peacock, an unpublished quarterly, beardsley promises him his best work.
lastly in this chaunt of omissions comes the drama of the nineties. unfortunately the drama, in so far as it affects the group of the nineties with which we are concerned, is almost a nullity. aubrey beardsley once commenced a play, which was never heard of, in collaboration with brandon thomas. ernest dowson wrote what beardsley called a ‘tiresome’ playlet. john davidson perpetrated a number of plays such as bruce (1886), smith, a tragic farce (1888), scaramouch in naxos, and two other plays in 1889 when he was feeling his way, and translated much later as hackwork a play of fran?ois coppée’s and victor hugo’s ruy blas. theodore peters’ pastoral and other similar trifles only go to show how barren the group itself was in the dramatist’s talent. nor can much be said for such poetic plays as theodore wratislaw’s the pity of love.
127 but it must be remembered, as a matter of fact, such a sweeping conclusion may not only be unjust but even impertinent. for where in all the theatres of the london of the nineties would the plays (if they had been written) of these young men have found a home? probably the dramatic output of the nineties was nil because there were no small theatres in london at that date of the type to give these young men a hope that any works they might write could be produced. so only at the end of the decade do we see the dramatic outburst when the irish movement founded a theatre of its own and produced j. m. synge, and also when miss horniman gave manchester a repertory theatre, and then stanley houghton came.
true, at the same period as the nineties oscar wilde was producing plays burlesquing the world of society, and bernard shaw was getting ready to launch his own works by bombasting every one else’s; but the little movement of the younger men remained dramatically dumb. nothing came even when george moore produced the strike at arlingford and john todhunter the black cat. it is a hard thing to believe that all these young men were devoid of the dramatic instinct. i128 prefer for my part to blame the london theatrical world for the lack of those minute theatres which have become so much a part of the night life of big continental cities and are so admirably adapted for the production of the works of new dramatists.
indeed, the theatrical atmosphere of london at that time was in its usual perpetual state of stuffiness. there was not even a beneficent society then such as we now have in the pioneer players, whose theatre (if one may so symbolise it) is the charity house for emancipated dramatists. ibsen’s doll’s house had been produced in london just before the nineties’ epoch began, and, like anything new in popular art over here, raised the hue-and-cry. then, too, the big ‘star’ curse, which wilde himself so justly spurned, was permanently settled on our own insular drama like a stranglehold on the author.
outside england, in the big art world of the continent, schnitzler was beginning in vienna.22 maurice maeterlinck, in belgium, had begun23 too the drama of expressive silences which came to light in paris. there were sudermann and hauptmann in germany; echegaray in spain; d’annunzio in italy; ibsen129 and bj?rnstjerne bj?rnson finishing their work for the scandinavian drama; while the playwrights of paris were, as always, feverishly fabricating all sorts of movements, as when paul fort, a boy of eighteen, founds in 1890 the théatre d’art. but what was going on in england? pinero’s the second mrs. tanqueray, wilde’s salomé, and his light comedies, together with stuff by henry arthur jones, sydney grundy, etc., represented the serious drama. the critics were perturbed, as they generally are. the musical comedy and its singing, pirouetting soubrettes deluded the populace into the belief that it had a great drama, when all these spectacles should really have been housed in london in spacious tearooms for the benefit of that multitude which is fond of tinkling melody and teapots. there was not even in london a single überbrettlbuhnen, as the germans mouth it, where those who love beer could go to hear poets recite their verse à la otto bierbaum, let alone little theatres where what we so dolefully term the serious drama could be played.
22 anatol, 1889–90.
23 la princesse maleine, 1889.
even, too, in those days, the newspaper critics, muzzled by the business department, which has never any wish to lose its theatrical advertisements, said little, with a few honest130 exceptions like bernard shaw. max beerbohm, when he took over the critical work of shaw on the saturday review was obviously unhappy. english theatres rapidly became as elaborate and as pompous as the church militant in its palmy days. they kept growing in size. in london, indeed, the small theatre never had its boom. indeed, the nineties was the age when the big theatres were being built to fill their owners’ pockets and the men of the nineties themselves (be it for whatever reason you like) did not produce a single play.
