FIN DE SIECLE:

1880-1901 The Age of Oscar Wilde IN WORDS & MUSIC Compiled by Michael Millard

INTRODUCTION
At the end of the nineteenth century there was a very real sense that both a century and an era were drawing to their close, of the fin de siecle and of the appropriateness of the term itself. The older generation was passing away. For Richard Le Gallienne, the death of Tennyson in 1892 gave dramatic emphasis to the passing of the old Victorian order. The death of Morris, wrote Walter Crane, marked an epoch both in art, and in social and political thought. When paying tribute to Gladstone, Lord Salisbury reflected that the most distinguished political name of this century has been withdrawn from the roll of the living . In tonights programme we give pride of place to two men who died in 1900, the final year of both the nineteenth century and the Victorian era: Oscar Wilde and Sir Arthur Sullivan (together with his satirical partner, W.S.Gilbert). The new century began with the death of the Queen. Sir John Stainer, the composer of The Crucifixion, died two months later, on 31st. March 1901. His grave is in Oxford. Next years Golden Jubilee for our own Queen has only one precedent, that of Queen Victoria. A.E.Housman reflected upon it in the stanzas entitled 1887, from his most famous poem, A Shropshire Lad. Yet our perspective tonight is a very different one from that of our centenary tribute: Victoria Regina et Imperatrix. We begin by opening up the contemporary debate on the Empire and include Rudyard Kiplings iconoclastic poem, The Widow at Windsor. The mores and dictates of High Victorianism were being openly questioned, attacked and ridiculed by a new generation. Everything that appealed to them seemed to be hailed as new. The New Woman was demanding the Emancipation of Women. The plethora of issues that this raised were being openly discussed in influential journals, such as The Nineteenth Century. Groundbreaking detailed research exposed the horrific living conditions of the urban poor. Individualism and laissez-faire economics were under attack from the New Liberalism of the Newcastle Programme, the more strident New Unionism of the unskilled workforce and the rising spectre of Socialism. The writings of Marx and Engels were becoming available in English. Socialist organisations and journals were being founded. All for the Cause was one of William Morriss early Chants for Socialists written for the Social-Democratic Federations journal Justice. His News from Nowhere was one of numerous conflicting visions of the future, which received their impetus from the imminent sense of the fin de siecle. Its communist utopia contrasted with the pessimistic science fiction of H.G.Wellss Time Machine. Oscar Wilde defined aestheticism as a search after the signs of the beautiful. It is a science of the beautiful through which men seek the correlation of the arts. It is, to speak more exactly, the search after the secret of life. As its leading apostle, he toured America in 1882. He gave lectures like The English Renaissance in Art to packed audiences. Dances were named after him, and so were songs like Oscar Dear, one verse of which I have included. In England, the essence of the immensely popular Aesthetic Movement was defined as the union of cultivated tastes to define and decide upon what is to be admired. Thus its opponents were derided as philistines. Yet in reality, the broader its appeal became the more diluted was its essence, so that even so-called philistines became partial aesthetes. This becomes clearly demonstrated in the caricature of Mr. Philistine Jones, which appeared in that short-lived mouthpiece of the movement, The Burlington. The so-called philistines responded with withering satire but none surpassed the success accorded to Gilbert & Sullivans Patience on both sides of the Atlantic. In London, it ran at the Savoy Theatre for 578 performances. Wilde bided his time and replied in the stage direction of The Importance of Being Earnest, where Jack and Algernon whistle some dreadful popular air from a British opera. I owe the inclusion of Private Views to Max Beerbohm, who found it in a contemporary chronicle and described it as so quaint and so instinct with the spirit of its time. My mother heard Paderewski, the Polish pianist in Aubrey Beardsleys The Three Musicians. My father saw Ellen Terry on the stage. She and Sir Henry Irving were the greatest Shakespearean double act of their generation. Oscar Wilde was a devoted admirer, as is shown in his review of their Hamlet. George Bernard Shaw had a play rejected by Irving and became antagonistic towards him, accusing Irving of mutilating Shakespeare. He does not merely cut plays: he disembowels them . In contrast, Shaw was laudatory about Wildes comedies. Mr Wilde has creative imagination, philosophic humor ( sic), and original wit, besides being a master of language. However he was not enamoured by The Importance of Being Earnest. It was and is difficult for later generations to fathom why The Yellow Book stirred up such a commotion. It ran for thirteen issues and lasted for only three years, from April 1894 until April 1897. Yet no publication has become so identified with the terms fin de siecle and decadence. Hubert Crackenthorpe was one contributor who was unhappy with the way the latter term had become so all-embracing: Decadence, decadence, you are all decadent today. All whirling towards a common end. Six years later, Arthur Symons declared that decadence had proved to be no more than the interlude, half a mock interlude. Symons had a nervous breakdown in 1908. Discharged from a mental asylum two years later, he lived out the rest of his life quietly in his cottage at Wittersham in Kent. For W.B.Yeats his tavern comrades of the Rhymers Club were the poets with whom I learnt my trade. He referred to them as the Tragic Generation. Aubrey Beardsley, Ernest Dowson, Oscar Wilde and Lionel Johnson were all dead by 1902. All of them had become Roman Catholics. Oscar Wilde once said that Catholicism is the only religion to die in. For him it was a silent deathbed reception. In 1911 Lord Alfred Douglas (Bosie) was received, as he struggled against homosexuality and the inheritance of family
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traits. Dowson too found consolation in Roman Catholicism, as exemplified in his evocative and impressionistic Benedicto Domini. My fathers friend, Desmond Flower, produced a definitive edition of Dowsons poems. In his introduction, he drew attention to the wholesale conversion to Rome of all the younger writers. Gerard Manley Hopkins had been received into the Roman Catholic Church by Newman in 1866 and had become a Jesuit. In 1877, when Newman visited Oxford, Wilde dreamed of a visit to Newman, of the holy sacrament in a new church, and of a quiet and peace afterwards in my soul. In the 1880s Cardinal Newmans beautiful fading figure was still at the Edgbaston Oratory, and the astute, worldly Cardinal Manning was still at Westminster (Richard Le Gallienne). They were Englands two convert cardinals, Manning being Wildes favourite preacher. Newman had written his mystical poem The Dream of Gerontius in1865. Edward Elgar, a cradle Catholic, adapted Newmans poem. When he had completed the full score, he added this quotation from John Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies: This is the best of me...this I saw and knew: this, if anything of mine, is worth your memory. Thus Gerontius combined that older generation, which had passed on, and a younger which was to bring its talents to bear on the new century. In the meantime, this is perhaps not the place to take literally the advice Sir John Betjeman offered to the readers of Martin Seckers anthology of The Eighteen Nineties.

Draw the curtains, kindle a joss-stick in a dark corner, settle down on a sofa by the fire, light an Egyptian cigarette and sip a brandy and soda, as you think yourself back to the world which ended in prison and disgrace for Wilde, suicide for Crackenthorpe and John Davidson, premature death for Beardsley, Dowson, Lionel Johnson, religion for some, drink and drugs for others, temporary or permanent oblivion for many more.

ANDREW PATTERSON MORAG CROWTHER ANNABEL MOLYNEAUX VIC CLEMENTS DAVID BENNETT TONY DAWKS BILL LUND PADDY LUND MICHAEL MILLARD JAMES MILLARD CELIA HUMPHREYS ROGER HUMPHREYS

Pianist/Organist Soprano Mezzo Baritone Tenor Reader Reader Reader Reader Reader Reader Reader

Empire of England:
.

This mighty empire hath but feet of clay

All passes-: sceptre, sword and throne Laws and the might whereby they swayed,
(Arthur Symons: Venus of Melos)

1881 Ave Imperatrix 1885 Hands all round

WILDE:

OSCAR WILDE ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

Set in this Northern sea, Queen of these restless fields of tide, England! what shall men say of thee, Before whose feet the worlds divide?

TENNYSON: First pledge our Queen this solemn night, Then drink to England every guest; That mans the true Cosmopolite Who loves his native land the best. May freedoms oak for ever live With stronger life from day to day; That mans the best Conservative Who lops the moulderd branch away. Hands all round! God the traitors hope confound! To this great cause of Freedom drink, my friends, And the great name of England, round and round. WILDE: The earth, a brittle globe of glass, Lies in the hollow of thy hand, And through its heart of crystal pass, Like shadows through a twilight land, The spears of crimson-suited war, The long white-crested waves of fight, And all the deadly fires which are The torches of the lords of Night.

TENNYSON: To all the loyal hearts who long To keep our English Empire whole! To all our noble sons, the strong New England of the Southern pole! To England under Indian skies, To those dark millions of her realm! To Canada whom we love and prize, Whatever statesmen hold the helm. Hands all round! God the traitors hope confound! To this great name of England drink, my friends, And all her glorious empire, round and round.
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To all our statesmen so they be True leaders of the lands desire! To both our Houses may they see Beyond the borough and the shire! We saild wherever ships could sail, We founded many a mighty state; Pray God out greatness may not fail Through craven fears of being great. Hands all round! God the traitors hope confound! To this great cause of Freedom drink, my friends, And the great name of England, round and round. WILDE: What profit now that we have bound The whole round world with nets of gold, If hidden in our heart is found The care that groweth never old? What profit that our galleys ride, Pine-forest-like, on every main? Ruin and wreck are at our side, Grim warders of the House of Pain. Where are the brave, the strong, the fleet? Where is our English chivalry? Wild grasses are their burial-sheet, And sobbing waves their threnody. O loved ones lying far away, What word of love can dead lips send! O wasted dust! O senseless clay! Is this the end! Is this the end! Peace, peace! We wrong the noble dead To vex their solemn slumber so, Though childless, and with thorn-crowned head, Up the steep road must England go, Yet when this fiery web is spun, Her watchmen shall descry from far The young Republic like the sun Rise from these crimson seas of war.

1900 England, My England

W.E.HENLEY/F.ALLITSEN

1887

A.E.HOUSMAN

From Clee to heaven the beacon burns, The shires have seen it plain, From north and south the sign returns And beacons burn again. Look left, look right, the hills are bright, The dales are light between, Because tis fifty years tonight That God has saved the Queen. Now, when the flame they watch not towers About the sod they trod, Lads, well remember friends of ours Who shared the work with God. To skies that knit their heartstrings right To fields that bred them brave, The saviours come home tonight: Themselves they could not save. It dawns in Asia, tombstones show And Shropshire names are read, And the Nile spells his overflow Beside the Severns dead. We pledge in peace by farm and town, The Queen they served in war, And fire the beacon up and down The land they perished for. God save the Queen we living sing, From height to height tis heard; And with the rest your voices ring, Lads of the Fifty-third. Oh, God will save her, fear you not: Be you the men youve been, Get you the sons your fathers got, And God will save the Queen.

1892 The Widow at Windsor

RUDYARD KIPLING

Ave you 'eard o' the Widow at Windsor With a hairy gold crown on 'er 'ead? She 'as ships on the foam -- she 'as millions at 'ome, An' she pays us poor beggars in red. (Ow, poor beggars in red!) There's 'er nick on the cavalry 'orses, There's 'er mark on the medical stores -An' 'er troopers you'll find with a fair wind be'ind That takes us to various wars. (Poor beggars! -- barbarious wars!) Then 'ere's to the Widow at Windsor, An' 'ere's to the stores an' the guns, The men an' the 'orses what makes up the forces O' Missis Victorier's sons. (Poor beggars! Victorier's sons!) Walk wide o' the Widow at Windsor, For 'alf o' Creation she owns: We 'ave bought 'er the same with the sword an' the flame, An' we've salted it down with our bones. (Poor beggars! -- it's blue with our bones!) Hands off o' the sons o' the Widow, Hands off o' the goods in 'er shop, For the Kings must come down an' the Emperors frown When the Widow at Windsor says "Stop"! (Poor beggars! -- we're sent to say "Stop"!) Then 'ere's to the Lodge o' the Widow, From the Pole to the Tropics it runs -To the Lodge that we tile with the rank an' the file, An' open in form with the guns. (Poor beggars! -- it's always they guns!) We 'ave 'eard o' the Widow at Windsor, It's safest to let 'er alone: For 'er sentries we stand by the sea an' the land Wherever the bugles are blown. (Poor beggars! -- an' don't we get blown!) Take 'old o' the Wings o' the Mornin', 7An' flop round the earth till you're dead; But you won't get away from the tune that they play To the bloomin' old rag over'ead. (Poor beggars! -- it's 'ot over'ead!) Then 'ere's to the sons o' the Widow, Wherever, 'owever they roam. 'Ere's all they desire, an' if they require
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A speedy return to their 'ome. (Poor beggars! -- they'll never see 'ome!)

1881 The Soldiers of our Queen (Patience) GILBERT & SULLIVAN

Men & Women

Men are horribly tedious when they are good husbands, and abominably conceited when they are not. And we women know life too late. That is the difference between men and women. Most men and women are forced to perform parts for which they have no qualification. I say that in a country governed by a woman- where you allow women to form part of the other estate of the realmpeeresses in their own right for example- where you allow a woman not only to hold land, but to be a lady of the manor and hold legal courts- where a woman by law may be a churchwarden and overseer of the poor- I do not see, when she has so much to do with the state and the Church, on what reasons, if you come to right, she has not a right to vote. (Benjamin
Disraeli, April 1866)

1900

Poem

ANONYMOUS

When we women claim the franchise, Men have one answer in note By reason of your womanhood, You do not have the vote. But when the tax collector calls, Its not enough to say By reason of our womanhood, We do refuse to pay.

1884 Loves Old Sweet Song

1894 A Reply from the Daughters

G.C.BINGHAM/J.L.MOLLOY

(The Nineteenth Century, March 1894)

LADY KATHLEEN CUFFE The so-called revolting maiden only asks for a small amount of liberty. The average girl, as Mr. Besant might call her, does not want it for any of the weird and wild purposes set forth to the world of late. She does not want to read the books forbidden by her parents, nor to see the plays they prefer her not to see. She only wishes to enjoy the minor pleasures and duties of life without the now inevitable bored and wearied chaperon. She does not want anything very startling or very important. And, as things are now, if she wanted to be great, how could she? ALYS W.PEARSALL-SMITH Your daughter wants herself. She belongs to you now, and can only walk in your paths, and enjoy your pleasures, and live your life. She wants to belong to herself. She has paths of her own she longs to walk in, and purposes of her own she is eager to carry out. She is an independent being, created by God for the development of her own talents, and for the use of her own time. Her capacities were not given to her parents, but to herself; her life is not their possession, but her own; and to herself God looks for an account of it. Put yourselves in her place, and ask yourselves
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how you would like to have no independence, but be obliged always to live someone elses life and carry out only someone elses purposes
He laughed very heartily for a man of his years, and said: It is not without reason that I have got a reputation as a careful student of history. I believe I understand the Emancipation of Women movement of the nineteenth century. I doubt if any other man alive does. (William Morris: News from Nowhere)

1889 When a merry maiden marries (The Gondoliers) GILBERT & SULLIVAN
Dont forget to raise your hat to every lady acquaintance you meet.
(Censor: Dont- 1884)

1897 Manners for Men

MRS.HUMPHRY Like every other woman, I have my ideal of manhood. The difficulty is to describe it. First of all, he must be a gentleman; but that means so much that it, in its turn, requires explanation. Gentleness and moral strength combined must be the salient characteristics of the gentleman, together with that polish that is never acquired but in one way: constant association with those so happily placed that they have enjoyed the influences of education and refinement all through their lives. He must be thoughtful for others, kind to women and children and all helpless things, tender-hearted to the old and the poor and the unhappy, but never foolishly weak in giving gifts do harm instead of good- his brain must be as fine as his heart, in fact. There are few such men but they do exist. I know one or two. Reliable as rocks, judicious in every action, dependable in trifles as well as the large affairs of life, full of mercy and kindness to others, affectionate and wellloved in their homes, their lives are pure and kindly.

1877 Never mind the why & wherefore(H.M.S.Pinafore)

GILBERT & SULLIVAN
The fickleness of the women I love is only equalled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.
(George Bernard Shaw, The Philanderer, Act II- 1898)

Childhood
Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.

Sweet and Low

(1926) The Romantic 90s
CYRIL OSCAR CYRIL OSCAR

TENNYSON/J.BARNBY

RICHARD LE GALLIENNE CYRIL & OSCAR WILDE Father, do you ever dream? Why, of course, my darling. It is the first duty of a gentleman to dream. And what do you dream of? What do I dream of? Oh, I dream of dragons with gold and silver scales, and scarlet flames coming out of their mouths, of eagles with eyes made of diamonds that can see over the whole world at once, of lions with yellow manes, and voices like thunder, of elephants with little houses on their backs, and
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tigers and zebras with barred and spotted coats. But tell me, what do you dream of, Cyril? CYRIL I dream of pigs

Good & Bad Children

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

Children, you are very little, And your bones are very brittle; If you would grow great and stately, You must try to walk sedately. You must still be bright and quiet, And content with simple diet; And remain, through all bewild'ring, Innocent and honest children. Happy hearts and happy faces, Happy play in grassy places-That was how in ancient ages, Children grew to kings and sages. But the unkind and the unruly, And the sort who eat unduly, They must never hope for glory-Theirs is quite a different story! Cruel children, crying babies, All grow up as geese and gabies, Hated, as their age increases, By their nephews and their nieces.

1887 The Star of Bethlehem

F.E.WEATHERLY/ S.ADAMS
ERNEST DOWSON

O Faith of England
1896 Benedicto Domini
Without the sullen noises of the street! The voice of London, inarticulate, Hoarse and blaspheming, surges in to meet The silent blessing of the Immaculate. Dark is the church, and dim the worshippers, Hushed with bowed heads as though by some old spell, While through the incense-laden air there stirs The admonition of a silver bell. Dark is the church, save where the altar stands, Dressed like a bride, illustrious with light, Where one old priest exalts with tremulous hands The one true solace of mans fallen plight.
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Strange silence here: without the sounding street Heralds the worlds swift passage to the fire: O Benediction, perfect and complete! When shall men cease to suffer and desire!

1887 All for Jesus (The Crucifixion) W.J.SPARROW SIMPSON/J.STAINER

All for Jesus--all for Jesus, This our song shall ever be; For we have no hope, nor Saviour, If we have not hope in Thee. All for Jesus--Thou wilt give us Strength to serve Thee, hour by hour, None can move us from Thy presence, While we trust thy love and power. All for Jesus--at Thine altar Thou wilt give us sweet content; There, dear Lord, we shall receive Thee In the solemn sacrament. All for Jesus--Thou hast loved us; All for Jesus--Thou hast died; All for Jesus--Thou art with us; All for Jesus crucified. All for Jesus--all for Jesus-This the Church's song must be; Till, at last, her sons are gathered One in love and one in thee.
Glory and honour Let the world deride and take them; Crown its monarchs and unmake them, But Thou, Thou wilt reign. W.J.SPARROW SIMPSON (The Crucifixion, 1887)

O Deus ego amo te

GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

O GOD, I love thee, I love theeNot out of hope of heaven for me Nor fearing not to love and be In the everlasting burning. Thou, thou, my Jesus, after me Didst reach thine arms out dying, For my sake sufferedst nails and lance,
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Mocked and marred countenance. Sorrows passing number, Sweat and care and cumber, Yea and death, and this for me. And thou couldst see me sinning: Then I, why should not I love thee, much in love with me? Not for heavens sake; not to be Out of hell by loving thee; Nor for any gains I see; But just the way thou didst for me I do love and I will love thee: What must I love thee, Lord, for then? For being my king and God. Amen.

Jesu, so

A Fossil

MAY KENDALL

He had his Thirty-nine Articles, And his Nicene Creed. And his Athanasian. Nothing else He appeared to need. He looked like a walking dogma, pent Neath a shovel brim: If he never knew what the dogma meant, Twas small blame to him. He did not hazard a single guess, That might lead to twain, Whose answers never would coalesce In a peaceful brain! He seemed pure fossil; yet I protest That across the aisle I one day saw him of life possessed For a little while! And streams in the deserts, sang the choir. What a strange surmise Just then awoke, like a smouldering fire, In his weary eyes! That never came from the Nicene Creed Twas a dream, I know, Of some fair day when he lived indeed, In the long ago.

1877 Time was when Love (The Sorcerer)

GILBERT & SULLIVAN

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Visions of the Future

1887 Womans Future

Progress is the realisation of Utopias. Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable.

MAY KENDALL

Complacent they tell us, hard hearts and derisive In vain is our ardour, in vain are our sighs; Our intellects, bound by a limit decisive, To the level of Homers may never arise. We heed not the falsehood, the base innuendo; The laws of the universe, these are our friends. Our talents shall rise in a mighty crescendo; We trust Evolution to make us amends! On Fashions vagaries your energies are strewing, Devoting your days to a rug or a screen, Oh, rouse to a lifework- do something worth doing! Invent a new planet, a flying-machine. Mere charms superficial, mere feminine graces That fade or that flourish, no more you may prize; But the knowledge of Newton will beam from your faces, The soul of a Spencer will shine in your eyes. Envoy Though jealous exclusion may tremble to own us, Oh, wait for the time when our brains shall expand! When once were enthroned, you shall never dethrone us, The poets, the sages, the seers of the land!

1891The Soul of Man under Socialism

OSCAR WILDE

With the abolition of private property, we shall have true, beautiful, healthy Individualism. Nobody will waste his life in accumulating things, and the symbols for things. One will live. To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all. It will be a marvellous thing - the true personality of man - when we see it. It will grow naturally and simply, flower-like, or as a tree grows. It will not be at discord. It will never argue or dispute. It will not prove things. It will know everything. And yet it will not busy itself about knowledge. It will have wisdom. Its value will not be measured by material things. It will have nothing. And yet it will have everything, and whatever one takes from it, it will still have, so rich will it be. It will not be always meddling with others, or asking them to be like itself. It will love them because they will be different. For what man has sought for is, indeed, neither pain nor pleasure, but simply Life . Man has sought to live intensely, fully, perfectly. When he can do so without exercising restraint on others,
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or suffering it ever, and his activities are all pleasurable to him, he will be saner, healthier, more civilised, more himself. Pleasure is Nature's test, her sign of approval. When man is happy, he is in harmony with himself and his environment. The new Individualism, for whose service Socialism, whether it wills it or not, is working, will be perfect harmony. It will be complete, and through it each man will attain to his perfection. The new Individualism is the new Hellenism.
.

1884 All for the Cause WILLIAM MORRIS/BEETHOVEN

1890 News from Nowhere
WILLIAM MORRIS

He was silent for some time, and I would not interrupt him. At last he began again: "But you must know that we of these generations are strong and healthy of body, and live easily; we pass our lives in reasonable strife with nature exercising not one side of ourselves only, but all sides, taking the keenest pleasure in all the life of the orld. So it is a point of honour with us not to be self-centred; not to suppose that the world must cease because one man is sorry; therefore we should think it foolish, or if you will, criminal, to exaggerate these matters of sentiment and sensibility: we are no more inclined to eke out our sentimental sorrows than to cherish our bodily pains; and we recognise that there are other pleasures besides love-making. You must remember, also that we are long-lived, and that therefore beauty both in man and woman is not so fleeting as it was in the days when we were burdened so heavily by self-inflicted diseases. So we shake off these griefs in a way which perhaps the sentimentalists of other times would think contemptible and unheroic, but which we think necessary and manlike. As on the other hand, therefore, we have ceased to be commercial in our love-matters, so also we have ceased to be artificially foolish. The folly which comes by nature, the un-wisdom of the immature man, or the older man caught in a trap, we must put up with that, nor are we much ashamed of it; but to be conventionally sensitive or sentimental-my friend, I am old and perhaps disappointed, but at least I think we have cast off some of the follies of the older world."

1895 The Time Machine

H.G.WELLS

I cannot convey the sense of abominable desolation that hung over the world. The red eastern sky, the northward blackness, the salt Dead Sea, the stony beach crawling with these foul, slow stirring monsters, the uniform poisonous-looking green of the lichenous plants, the thin air that hurts one's lungs: all contributed to an appalling effect. I moved on a hundred years, and there was the same red sun--a little larger, a little duller--the same dying sea, the same chill air, and the same crowd of earthy crustacea creeping in and out among the green weed and the red rocks. And in the westward sky, I saw a curved pale line like a vast new moon. `So I travelled, stopping ever and again, in great strides of a thousand years or more, drawn on by the mystery of the earth's fate, watching with a strange fascination the sun grow larger and duller in the westward sky, and the life of the old earth ebb away. At last, more than thirty million years hence, the huge red-hot dome of the sun had come to obscure nearly a tenth part of the darkling heavens. Then I stopped once more, for the crawling multitude of crabs had disappeared, and the red beach, save for its livid green liverworts and lichens, seemed lifeless. And now it was
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flecked with white. A bitter cold assailed me. Rare white flakes ever and again came eddying down. To the north-eastward, the glare of snow lay under the starlight of the sable sky and I could see an undulating crest of hillocks pinkish white. There were fringes of ice along the sea margin, with drifting masses further out; but the main expanse of that salt ocean, all bloody under the eternal sunset, was still unfrozen.

1892 Ive heard it said (Haddon Hall)

S.GRUNDY/ SULLIVAN

Lilies & Sunflowers

a sentimental passion of a vegetable fashion(W.S.Gilbert: Patience) 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. (Max Beerbohm: 1880 Yellow Book, 1894)

1889 Days & Nights Prologue

ARTHUR SYMONS

ART lives, they say, withdrawn on some far peak, The home of the clouds, the sanctuary of stars; She hearkens, and the ancient heavens speak, She sees strange lands beyond the sunset bars. Brooding aloft, she reigns a lonely queen, Nor aught of earth nor aught of man would know, Impassible, inexorably serene, Cold as the morning on the hills of snow. So say they, blindest of leaders of the blind, Bending before a phantom fancy-bred: Draw back the curtain- there is nought behind; The godhead from the empty shrine is fled. Seek her not there; but go where cities pour Their turbid human stream through street and mart, A dark stream flowing onward evermore Down to an unknown ocean; - there is Art. She stands amidst the tumult, and is calm; She reads the hearts self-closed against the light; She probes an ancient wound, yet brings no balm; She is ruthless, yet she doeth all things right. The winter of the world is in her soul, The pity of the little lives we lead, And the long slumber and the certain goal, And after us our own rebellious seed.
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Therefore the notes are blended in her breath, And the nights and days one equal song unites; Yet, since of man with trouble born to death. She sings, her song is less of Days than Nights.

1881 Am I alone? (Patience)

1881 Punch ANONYMOUS

GILBERT & SULLIVAN

The haunt of the very aesthetic, Here comes the supremely intense, The long-haired and hyper-poetic, Whose sound is mistaken for sense. And many a maiden will mutter, When Oscar looms large on her sight, 'He's quite too consumately utter, As well as too utterly quite.'

1882 The English Renaissance in Art

OSCAR WILDE

You have heard, I think, a few of you, of two flowers connected with the aesthetic movement in England, and said (I assure you, erroneously) to be the food of some aesthetic young men. Well, let me tell you that the reason we love the lily and the sunflower, in spite of what Mr. Gilbert may tell you, is not for any vegetable fashion at all. It is because these two lovely flowers are in England the two most perfect models of design, the most naturally adapted for decorative art - the gaudy leonine beauty of the one and the precious loveliness of the other giving to the artist the most entire and perfect joy. We spend our days, each one of us, in looking for the secret of life. Well, the secret of life is in art.
One of the peculiarities of his speech is that he accents almost at regular intervals without regard to the sense, perhaps a result of an effort to be rhythmic in conversation as well as in verse. (New York Tribune, 3 January 1883)
for several years it was as the typical aesthete that he kept himself before the notice of the public. At the same time he was a man of far greater originality and power of mind than many of the apostles of aestheticism. (The Times- 1 December 1900)

O.Wilde! Who is O.Wilde? Nobody knows O.Wilde- but Oscar Wilde is a household word!

1882 Oscar Dear

F.W.HELMICK

Ill sing to you of a nice young man Of virtues rich and rare, Of stature tall and ankles thin And long and curly hair. Aesthetic to a great degree In actions sweet and mild Sublimely lank and nonchalant, But just a little wild!
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1881 If youre anxious for to shine (Patience)

Mr. Philistine Jones
THE BURLINGTON

GILBERT & SULLIVAN

Mr. Philistine Jones dubs all aesthetes idiots, while he also adopts their ideas. A dozen years ago his dazzling carpets and wallpapers were enough to give a templar a fit of delirium tremens his furniture was a roughly hewn mass of ponderous mahogany, his walls were hung with abominations encircled in tawdry gilt frames which he called pictures, he delighted in waxen fruit under glass covers; his crockery, his glass, in fine everything he possessed and especially admired was a violation of good taste. But somehow he has changed all this the human eye may now repose upon the neutral tints of his carpets and walls. He has a dado, and blue and white china may be espied in nooks and corners he has eschewed gilt - he has ceased to care for stucco he lives in a Queen Anne house and actually has begun to think about the shape of his jugs.

Private Views
There were quaint, beautiful, extraordinary costumes walking about ultra-aesthetics, artistic- aesthetics, aesthetics that made up their minds to be daring, and suddenly gave way in some important point put a frivolous bonnet on the top of a grave and garment that Albert Durer might have designed for a mantle. There were fashionable costumes that Mrs. Mason or Madame Elise might have turned out that morning. The motley crowd mingled, forming into groups, sometimes dazzling you by the array of colours that you never thought to see in full daylight. Canary-coloured garments flitted cheerily by the garments of the saddest green. A hat in an agony of pokes and angles was seen in company with a bonnet that was a gay garland of flowers. A vast cape that might have enshrouded the form of a Master Dolorosa hung by the side of a jauntily-striped Langtry-hood.

1881 When I go out of door (Patience)

GILBERT & SULLIVAN

the truth for which I was contending, that literature-painting-all art, are no other than pleasures, which we turn into trades.
(Letter: Robert Louis Stevenson to Richard Le Gallienne, 1893)

Music

They afterwards took me to a dancing saloon where I saw the only rational method of art criticism I have ever come across. Over the piano was printed a notice: - Please do not shoot the pianist. He is doing his best.

1895 The Three Musicians

AUBREY BEARDSLEY

Along the path that skirts the wood, The three musicians wend their way, Pleased with their thoughts, each others mood, Franz Himmels latest roundelay, The mornings work, a new-found theme, their breakfast Ones a soprano, lightly frocked In cool white muslin that just shows Her brown silk stockings gaily clocked,

and the summer day.

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Plump arms and elbows tipped with rose, And frills of petticoats and things, outlines as the warm wind blows. Beside her a slim, gracious boy Hastens to mend her tresses fall, And dies her favour to enjoy, And dies for reclame and recall At Paris and St. Petersburg, Vienna and St. Jamess Hall. The thirds a Polish Pianist With big engagements everywhere, A light heart and an iron wrist. And shocks and shoals of yellow hair, And fingers that can trill on sixths and fill beginners with despair. The three musicians stroll along And pluck the ears of ripened corn, Break into odds and ends of song, And mock the woods with Siegfrieds horn, And fill the air with Gluck, and fill the tweeded tourists soul with scorn. The Polish genius lags behind, And, with some poppies in his hand, Picks out the strings and wood and wind Of an imaginary band, Enchanted that for once his men obey his beat and understand. The charming cantatrice reclines And rests a moment where she sees Her childrens roof that hotly shines Amid the dusky summer trees, And fans herself, half shuts her eyes, and smoothes the frock about her knees. The gracious boy is at her feet, And weighs his courage with his chance; His fears soon melt in noonday heat. The tourist gives a furious glance, Red as his guide-book grows, moves on, and offers up a prayer for France.

1877 The Lost Chord

A.A.PROCTOR/ SIR ARTHUR SULLIVAN

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1901 Arthur Sullivan (Fortnightly Review) VERNON BLACKBURN

Sullivan was as much a satirist in musical notes as Gilbert in the verbal test. Their repartees in collaboration often reminded one of he sarcasm of Voltaire. (Saint- Saens)

Here I will venture to relate a very curious personal experience. It so happened that I journeyed to Rome almost immediately after my hearing for the first time The Yeomen of the Guard. I was full of melodies, full of its charm; and one night walking through the Piazza di Spagna, I was whistling the beautiful cconcerted piece, Strange Adventure, whistling it with absolutely no concern and just for the love of the music. A window was suddenly opened and a little face looked out in the moonlight, while a thin voice exclaimed in apparent seriousness: Whos that whistling my music? I looked up with astonishment and with some awe, and told the genleman that if he were Sir Arthur Sullivan it was his music that I was whistling; and, said I, I thought that the copyright did not extend to Italy. I remember how he convulsed with laughter somewhat to my discomforture, and clsed the window to shut out the chillof the night. I never dared at that period of life to make any call upon one whom I considered to be so far above the possibilities of intercourse.

1893 A tenor, all singers above (Utopia Limited)

GILBERT & SULLIVAN

The Stage

The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast. looked out from behind the curtain, and surveyed the house. It was a tawdry affair, all Cupids and cornucopias, like a third-rate wedding cake.

1885 Hamlet at the Lyceum

OSCAR WILDE

Hamlet seems to me essentially a good acting part, and in Mr. Irvings performance of it there is that combination of poetic grace with absolute reality which is so eternally delightful. And of all the parts which Miss Terry has acted in her brilliant career, there is none in which her infinite powers of pathos and imaginative and creative faculty are more shown than in Ophelia. Miss Terry is one of those rare artists who needs for her dramatic effect no elaborate dialogue and for whom the simplest words are sufficient. I love you not, says Hamlet, and all that Ophelia answers is, I was the more deceived. These are not very grand words to read, but as Miss Terry gave them in acting they seemed to be the highest possible expression of Ophelias character. Beautiful, too, was the quick remorse she conveyed by her face and gesture the moment she had lied to Hamlet and told him her father was at home.

1895 The Saturday Review

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

Irvings mission was to re-establish on the stage the touching, appealing nobility of sentiment and affection- the dignity which only asserts itself when it is wounded; and his early attempts to express these by the traditional methods of the old domineering, self-assertive, ambitious, thundering, superb school led him for a time into a grotesque confusion of style. In playing villains, too, his vein of callous, humorous impishness, with its occasional glimpses of a latent bestial dangerousness, utterly defied the methods of expression proper to the heavendefying, man-quelling tyrant, usurper, and murderer, who was the typical villain of the old school
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 In short, Irving had to find the right expression for a perfectly new indignity; and it was not until he had done this that he really accomplished his destiny, broke the old tradition, and left Barry Sullivan and Macready half a century behind. I will not say that he also left Shakespear (sic.) be.0hind His Hamlet, his Shylock, his Lear, though interesting in their own way, are spurious as representations of Shakespear. His Othello I have never seen: his Macbeth I thought fine and good, indicating that his business is with Shakespears later plays rather than with his earlier ones.

Fin de Siecle

Then, being dead, his life was not all vain. (Arthur Symons: Credo)
A lamp of life once lit not Death itself can quell (John Davidson: M le G.)

1896 When you find youre a broken-down critter (The Grand Duke)
GILBERT & SULLIVAN

1881 Sonnet 10 (Monna Innominata) CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

Time flies, hope flags, life plies a wearied wing; Death following hard on life gains ground apace; Faith runs with each and rears an eager face, Outruns the rest, makes light of everything, Spurns earth, and still finds breath to pray and sing; While love ahead of all uplifts his praise, Still asks for grace and still gives thanks for grace, Content with all day brings and night will bring. Life wanes; and when love folds his wings above Tired hope, and less we feel his conscious pulse, Let us go fall asleep, dear friend, in peace: A little while, and age and sorrow cease; A little while, and life reborn annuls Loss and decay and death, and all is love.

1900 Oscar Wilde

THE TIMES (1st. December)

A Reuter telegram from Paris states that OSCAR WILDE died there yesterday afternoon from meningitis. The melancholy end to a career which once promised so well is stated to have come in an obscure hotel in the Latin quarter. Here the once brilliant man of letters was living, exiled from his country and from the society of his countrymen. The verdict that a jury passed upon his conduct at the Old Bailey in May, 1895, destroyed for ever his reputation and condemned him to ignoble obscurity for the end of his days. When he had served his sentence of two year's imprisonment, he was broken in health as well as bankrupt in fame and fortune. Death has soon ended what must have been a life of wretchedness and unavailing regret.
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1901 To Oscar Wilde -The Dead Poet

I dreamed of him last night, I saw his face All radiant and unshadowed of distress, And as of old, in music measureless, I heard his golden voice and marked him trace Under the common thing the hidden grace, And conjure wonder out of emptiness Till mean things put on beauty like a dress And all the world was an enchanted place.

LORD ALFRED DOUGLAS

And then methought outside a fast locked gate I mourned the loss of unrecorded words, Forgotten tales and mysteries half said, Wonders that might have been articulate, And voiceless thoughts like murdered singing birds. And so I woke and knew he was dead.

1900 Nirvana
1889 Crossing the Bar

F.E.WEATHERLY/ S.ADAMS
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

Sunset and evening star, And one clear call for me! And may there be no moaning of the bar, When I put out to sea, But such a tide as moving seems asleep, Too full for sound and foam, When that which drew from out the boundless deep Turns again home. Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark! And may there be no sadness of farewell, When I embark; For though from out our bourne of Time and Place The flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have crossed the bar.
The Masters yonder in the Isle (Andrew Lang) Carry the last great bard to his last bed. (William Watson) The death of Tennyson in 1892 touched the imagination as giving dramatic emphasis to the passing of the old Victorian order, of which more than any other, he had been the intellectual spokesman, one might even say prophet, the inspired, magnificent vates.
(Richard Le Gallienne, 1926)

1892 Alfred, Lord Tennyson

NEW YORK TRIBUNE

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Tennyson is dead. The best of all the poets since Byron has ended his career. He dies at a great age, passing away in his eighty-fourth year - a noble mission completed and a beautiful life fulfilled. That mission was to develop in himself great character and soul, and by means of their expression in the finest and the most victorious form of art, to aid humanity in the achievement of spiritual progress. The worth and rank of other poets, in this generation, are disputed and discussed; but the worth and rank of Tennyson are not questioned. Such a fact is not without its special significance. Tennyson is the poet of love and of sorrow, of passion and of affection, of pageantry and of pathos, of sublimity and of faith; and especially he is the poet of destiny and of will. The range of his vision is very broad. His image is penetrating and deep. The reader of Tennyson finds that his own spirit- his essential experience, his discontent, his aspiration, the inmost fibre of his beingis expressed for him, with a fulness, a passionate sincerity, and an artistic beauty that he could never hope to reach and that satisfy him fully, and lead and guide, and strengthen him. Such a poet is a leader and comforter of the race, and it is right and natural that he should have its love and homage.

1896 William Morris (The Clarion)

ROBERT BLATCHFORD

I cannot help thinking that it does not matter what goes into the Clarion this week, because William Morris is dead. And what socialist will care for any other news this week, beyond that one sad fact? He was our best man, and he is dead. It is true that much of his work still lives, and will live. But we have lost him, and, great as was his work, he himself was greater. ... He was better than the best. Though his words fell like sword strokes, one always felt that the warrior was stronger than his sword. For Morris was not only a genius, he was a man. Strike at him where you would, he rang true. ... He was our best man. We cannot spare him; we cannot replace him. In all England there lives no braver, kinder, honester, cleverer, heartier man than William Morris. He is dead, and we cannot help feeling for a while that nothing else matters. Here was a man of courage, probity, genius, culture, character, who believed in Socialism with the whole power of his great heart and virile intellect. He was too great to be ignored, too high to be slandered, too thorough to be misrepresented and misunderstood. He stood there an unimpeachable witness whose testimony gained tenfold force from his character. He could not be depreciated, nor silenced, nor explained away. He had to be acknowledged with deference. The voice that sang of the Earthly Paradise was a sweet voice; the hand that wrought the Dream of John Ball was a strong hand. We shall not see such good work again for many a weary day. William Morris is dead.

1892 At the Burial of Cardinal Manning

LIONEL JOHNSON
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Victor in Roman purple, saint and knight, In peace he passes to eternal peace: Triumph so proud, knew not Romes ancient might; She knew not to make poor mens sorrows cease: For thousands, ere he won the holiest home, more homelier for this Prince of Rome.

Earth is

1900 Profiscere, anima Christi (Dream of Gerontius) J.H.NEWMAN/EDWARD ELGAR

1898 William Ewart Gladstone LORD SALISBURY (House of Lords)
The most distinguished political name of this century has been withdrawn from the roll of the living.

What is the cause of this unanimous feeling? It was on account of considerations more common to the masses of human beings, to the general working of the human mind, than any controversial questions of the policy that men recognised in him a man guided in all the steps he took, in all the efforts that he made, by a high moral ideal. What he sought were the attainments of great ideals and they could have issued from nothing but the greatest and the purest moral aspirations; and he is honoured by his countrymen, because through so many years, across so many vicissitudes and conflicts, they recognised this one characteristic of his action, which has never ceased to be felt. He will leave behind him the memory of a great Christian statesman. Set up necessarily on high- the sight of his character, his motives, and his intentions would strike all the world. They will have left a deep and most salutary influence on the political thought and the social thought of the generation in which he lived, and he will be long remembered not so much for the causes in which he was engaged or the political projects which he favoured, but as an example, to which history hardly furnishes a parallel, of a great Christian man.

1901 Funeral of Queen Victoria (2nd. February) THE TIMES

A mighty nation mourned on Saturday its irreparable loss. It was proper and right, it was in accordance with the vision of the Queen expressed by her faithful servants in her lifetime, that her funeral should be marked by every circumstance of public ceremonial, to the end that those who had been her subjects might look upon the moving scene in common grief, and might remember it to the end of their days. In that spirit the Queens funeral was carried out from when the gleam of the white pall and the flash of the golden Crown were seen at the doors of Osborne It was a ceremony of sorrowful splendour from beginning to end. Across that little arm of sea which divides the Queens island home, now her home no more, from the mainland of England, her coffin glided over a smooth sea and past one grim warship after another, British and foreign, amidst a thunder of cannon which seemed unending. It was to be sped by train to Victoria; it was to be borne in solemn pomp across London through such multitudes of people in real grief as the mind of man had never dreamed of before. It was to be followed by a train of mourners, Royal
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and representative, of unprecedented volume and splendour, significant at once of the sympathy of the world and the vast extent of the Empire. Finally the coffin was to rest, after a service of unexampled dignity and beauty, first in the Albert Memorial Chapel and then to the Mausoleum at Frogmore

February 2nd.1901

ANONYMOUS

And once a Silence weird and still! A SILENCE FELT, - with one united will Hushing the nation, over vale and hill, City, and town, and village! And a thrill Of solemn sadness breathes through every place Silent and strange once more- no form, no face. And every door is shut, and blinds are down, Grief as one mourning for his mother shown, And none are seen until the deep bells call To come to worship Him Who ruleth all; To come and mourn and meditate and pray With Royal mourners many miles away. The mourners go about the streets alack! They cannot, and they would not bring her back. And every thought is one, and every dress Betokens sombre sadness and distress. No day like this has history ever known, No Sovereign before such love has shown, Love, twind with wisdom, traind from earliest days, And fortified by prayer, in righteous ways.

1868 The Long Day closes

SIR ARTHUR SULLIVAN

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