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Title: The Works of Max Beerbohm

Author: Max Beerbohm

Commentator: John Lane

Posting Date: November 20, 2008 [EBook #1859]
Release Date: August, 1999

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORKS OF MAX BEERBOHM ***




Produced by Tom Weiss and G. Banks





THE WORKS OF MAX BEERBOHM

by Max Beerbohm


With a Bibliography by John Lane



Original Transcriber's Note:

I have transliterated the Greek passages. Here are some approximate
translations:

--philomathestatoi ton neaniskon: some of the youths most eager for
knowledge

--Nêpios: childish

--hexeis apodeiktikai: things that can be proven (Aristotle, Nic.
Ethics)

--eidôlon amauron: shadowy phantom (phrase used by Homer in The Odyssey
to describe the specter Athena sends to comfort Penelope)

--all' aiei: but always

--tina phôta megan kai kalon edegmen: I received some great and
beautiful light




     'Amid all he has here already achieved, full, we may
     think, of the quiet assurance of what is to come,
     his attitude is still that of the scholar; he
     seems still to be saying, before all
     things, from first to last, "I
     am utterly purposed
     that I will not
     offend."'



CONTENTS

     Dandies and Dandies
     A Good Prince
     1880
     King George the Fourth
     The Pervasion of Rouge
     Poor Romeo!
     Diminuendo
     Bibliography




Dandies and Dandies

How very delightful Grego's drawings are! For all their mad perspective
and crude colour, they have indeed the sentiment of style, and they
reveal, with surer delicacy than does any other record, the spirit of
Mr. Brummell's day. Grego guides me, as Virgil Dante, through all
the mysteries of that other world. He shows me those stiff-necked,
over-hatted, wasp-waisted gentlemen, drinking Burgundy in the Café des
Milles Colonnes or riding through the village of Newmarket upon their
fat cobs or gambling at Crockford's. Grego's Green Room of the Opera
House always delights me. The formal way in which Mdlle. Mercandotti is
standing upon one leg for the pleasure of Lord Fife and Mr. Ball Hughes;
the grave regard directed by Lord Petersham towards that pretty little
maid-a-mischief who is risking her rouge beneath the chandelier; the
unbridled decorum of Mdlle. Hullin and the decorous debauchery of Prince
Esterhazy in the distance, make altogether a quite enchanting picture.
But, of the whole series, the most illuminative picture is certainly the
Ball at Almack's. In the foreground stand two little figures, beneath
whom, on the nether margin, are inscribed those splendid words, Beau
Brummell in Deep Conversation with the Duchess of Rutland. The Duchess
is a girl in pink, with a great wedge-comb erect among her ringlets, the
Beau très dégagé, his head averse, his chin most supercilious upon his
stock, one foot advanced, the gloved fingers of one hand caught lightly
in his waistcoat; in fact, the very deuce of a pose.

In this, as in all known images of the Beau, we are struck by the utter
simplicity of his attire. The 'countless rings' affected by D'Orsay, the
many little golden chains, 'every one of them slighter than a cobweb,'
that Disraeli loved to insinuate from one pocket to another of his vest,
would have seemed vulgar to Mr. Brummell. For is it not to his fine
scorn of accessories that we may trace that first aim of modern
dandyism, the production of the supreme effect through means the
least extravagant? In certain congruities of dark cloth, in the rigid
perfection of his linen, in the symmetry of his glove with his hand, lay
the secret of Mr. Brummell's miracles. He was ever most economical, most
scrupulous of means. Treatment was everything with him. Even foolish
Grace and foolish Philip Wharton, in their book about the beaux and
wits of this period, speak of his dressing-room as 'a studio in which
he daily composed that elaborate portrait of himself which was to be
exhibited for a few hours in the clubrooms of the town.' Mr. Brummell
was, indeed, in the utmost sense of the word, an artist. No poet nor
cook nor sculptor, ever bore that title more worthily than he.

And really, outside his art, Mr. Brummell had a personality of almost
Balzacian insignificance. There have been dandies, like D'Orsay, who
were nearly painters; painters, like Mr. Whistler, who wished to be
dandies; dandies, like Disraeli, who afterwards followed some less
arduous calling. I fancy Mr. Brummell was a dandy, nothing but a dandy,
from his cradle to that fearful day when he lost his figure and had to
flee the country, even to that distant day when he died, a broken exile,
in the arms of two religieuses. At Eton, no boy was so successful as
he in avoiding that strict alternative of study and athletics which
we force upon our youth. He once terrified a master, named Parker,
by asserting that he thought cricket 'foolish.' Another time, after
listening to a reprimand from the headmaster, he twitted that learned
man with the asymmetry of his neckcloth. Even in Oriel he could see
little charm, and was glad to leave it, at the end of his first year,
for a commission in the Tenth Hussars. Crack though the regiment
was--indeed, all the commissions were granted by the Regent
himself--young Mr. Brummell could not bear to see all his
brother-officers in clothes exactly like his own; was quite as deeply
annoyed as would be some god, suddenly entering a restaurant of many
mirrors. One day, he rode upon parade in a pale blue tunic, with
silver epaulettes. The Colonel, apologising for the narrow system which
compelled him to so painful a duty, asked him to leave the parade. The
Beau saluted, trotted back to quarters and, that afternoon, sent in his
papers. Henceforth he lived freely as a fop, in his maturity, should.

His début in the town was brilliant and delightful. Tales of his
elegance had won for him there a precedent fame. He was reputed rich.
It was known that the Regent desired his acquaintance. And thus, Fortune
speeding the wheels of his cabriolet and Fashion running to meet him
with smiles and roses in St. James's, he might well, had he been worldly
or a weakling, have yielded his soul to the polite follies. But he
passed them by. Once he was settled in his suite, he never really
strayed from his toilet-table, save for a few brief hours. Thrice every
day of the year did he dress, and three hours were the average of his
every toilet, and other hours were spent in council with the cutter of
his coats or with the custodian of his wardrobe. A single, devoted life!
To White's, to routs, to races, he went, it is true, not reluctantly. He
was known to have played battledore and shuttlecock in a moonlit garden
with Mr. Previté and some other gentlemen. His elopement with a young
Countess from a ball at Lady Jersey's was quite notorious. It was even
whispered that he once, in the company of some friends, made as though
he would wrench the knocker off the door of some shop. But these things
he did, not, most certainly, for any exuberant love of life. Rather did
he regard them as healthful exercise of the body and a charm against
that dreaded corpulency which, in the end, caused his downfall. Some
recreation from his work even the most strenuous artist must have; and
Mr. Brummell naturally sought his in that exalted sphere whose modish
elegance accorded best with his temperament, the sphere of le plus beau
monde. General Bucknall used to growl, from the window of the Guards'
Club, that such a fellow was only fit to associate with tailors. But
that was an old soldier's fallacy. The proper associates of an artist
are they who practise his own art rather than they who--however
honourably--do but cater for its practice. For the rest, I am sure that
Mr. Brummell was no lackey, as they have suggested. He wished merely to
be seen by those who were best qualified to appreciate the splendour of
his achievements. Shall not the painter show his work in galleries, the
poet flit down Paternoster Row? Of rank, for its own sake, Mr. Brummell
had no love. He patronised all his patrons. Even to the Regent his
attitude was always that of a master in an art to one who is sincerely
willing and anxious to learn from him.

Indeed, English society is always ruled by a dandy, and the more
absolutely ruled the greater that dandy be. For dandyism, the perfect
flower of outward elegance, is the ideal it is always striving to
realise in its own rather incoherent way. But there is no reason why
dandyism should be confused, as it has been by nearly all writers, with
mere social life. Its contact with social life is, indeed, but one of
the accidents of an art. Its influence, like the scent of a flower, is
diffused unconsciously. It has its own aims and laws, and knows none
other. And the only person who ever fully acknowledged this truth
in aesthetics is, of all persons most unlikely, the author of Sartor
Resartus. That any one who dressed so very badly as did Thomas Carlyle
should have tried to construct a philosophy of clothes has always seemed
to me one of the most pathetic things in literature. He in the Temple
of Vestments! Why sought he to intrude, another Clodius, upon those
mysteries and light his pipe from those ardent censers? What were his
hobnails that they should mar the pavement of that delicate Temple? Yet,
for that he betrayed one secret rightly heard there, will I pardon his
sacrilege. 'A dandy,' he cried through the mask of Teufelsdröck, 'is a
clothes-wearing man, a man whose trade, office, and existence consists
in the wearing of clothes. Every faculty of his soul, spirit, purse,
and person is heroically consecrated to this one object, the wearing of
clothes wisely and well.' Those are true words. They are, perhaps, the
only true words in Sartor Resartus. And I speak with some authority.
For I found the key to that empty book, long ago, in the lock of the
author's empty wardrobe. His hat, that is still preserved in Chelsea,
formed an important clue.

But (behold!) as we repeat the true words of Teufelsdröck, there comes
Monsieur Barbey D'Aurevilly, that gentle moqueur, drawling, with a wave
of his hand, 'Les esprits qui ne voient pas les choses que par leur plus
petit côté, ont imaginé que le Dandysme était surtout l'art de la mise,
une heureuse et audacieuse dictature en fait de toilette et d'élégance
extérieure. Très-certainement c'est cela aussi, mais c'est bien
d'avantage. Le Dandysme est toute une manière d'être et l'on n'est
pas que par la côté matériellement visible. C'est une manière d'être
entièrement composée de nuances, comme il arrive toujours dans les
sociétés très-vieilles et très-civilisées.' It is a pleasure to argue
with so suave a subtlist, and we say to him that this comprehensive
definition does not please us. We say we think he errs.

Not that Monsieur's analysis of the dandiacal mind is worthless by any
means. Nor, when he declares that George Brummell was the supreme king
of the dandies and fut le dandysme même, can I but piously lay one
hand upon the brim of my hat, the other upon my heart. But it is as an
artist, and for his supremacy in the art of costume, and for all he did
to gain the recognition of costume as in itself an art, and for that
superb taste and subtle simplicity of mode whereby he was able to expel,
at length, the Byzantine spirit of exuberance which had possessed St.
James's and wherefore he is justly called the Father of Modern Costume,
that I do most deeply revere him. It is not a little strange that
Monsieur D'Aurevilly, the biographer who, in many ways, does seem most
perfectly to have understood Mr. Brummell, should belittle to a mere
phase that which was indeed the very core of his existence. To analyse
the temperament of a great artist and then to declare that his art was
but a part--a little part--of his temperament, is a foolish proceeding.
It is as though a man should say that he finds, on analysis, that
gunpowder is composed of potassium chloride (let me say), nitrate
and power of explosion. Dandyism is ever the outcome of a carefully
cultivated temperament, not part of the temperament itself. That manière
d'être, entièrement composée de nuances, was not more, as the writer
seems to have supposed, than attributory to Mr. Brummell's art. Nor is
it even peculiar to dandies. All delicate spirits, to whatever art they
turn, even if they turn to no art, assume an oblique attitude towards
life. Of all dandies, Mr. Brummell did most steadfastly maintain this
attitude. Like the single-minded artist that he was, he turned full and
square towards his art and looked life straight in the face out of the
corners of his eyes.

It is not hard to see how, in the effort to give Mr. Brummell his due
place in history, Monsieur D'Aurevilly came to grief. It is but strange
that he should have fallen into a rather obvious trap. Surely he should
have perceived that, so long as Civilisation compels her children to
wear clothes, the thoughtless multitude will never acknowledge dandyism
to be an art. If considerations of modesty or hygiene compelled every
one to stain canvas or chip marble every morning, painting and sculpture
would in like manner be despised. Now, as these considerations do compel
every one to envelop himself in things made of cloth and linen, this
common duty is confounded with that fair procedure, elaborate of many
thoughts, in whose accord the fop accomplishes his toilet, each morning
afresh, Aurora speeding on to gild his mirror. Not until nudity be
popular will the art of costume be really acknowledged. Nor even then
will it be approved. Communities are ever jealous (quite naturally) of
the artist who works for his own pleasure, not for theirs--more jealous
by far of him whose energy is spent only upon the glorification of
himself alone. Carlyle speaks of dandyism as a survival of 'the primeval
superstition, self-worship.' 'La vanité,' are almost the first words of
Monsieur D'Aurevilly, 'c'est un sentiment contre lequel tout le monde
est impitoyable.' Few remember that the dandy's vanity is far different
from the crude conceit of the merely handsome man. Dandyism is, after
all, one of the decorative arts. A fine ground to work upon is its first
postulate. And the dandy cares for his physical endowments only in so
far as they are susceptible of fine results. They are just so much to
him as to the decorative artist is inilluminate parchment, the form of a
white vase or the surface of a wall where frescoes shall be.

Consider the words of Count D'Orsay, spoken on the eve of some duel, 'We
are not fairly matched. If I were to wound him in the face it would not
matter; but if he were to wound me, ce serait vraiment dommage!' There
we have a pure example of a dandy's peculiar vanity--'It would be a real
pity!' They say that D'Orsay killed his man--no matter whom--in this
duel. He never should have gone out. Beau Brummell never risked his
dandyhood in these mean encounters. But D'Orsay was a wayward, excessive
creature, too fond of life and other follies to achieve real greatness.
The power of his predecessor, the Father of Modern Costume, is over us
yet. All that is left of D'Orsay's art is a waistcoat and a handful of
rings--vain relics of no more value for us than the fiddle of Paganini
or the mask of Menischus! I think that in Carolo's painting of him, we
can see the strength, that was the weakness, of le jeune Cupidon. His
fingers are closed upon his cane as upon a sword. There is mockery in
the inconstant eyes. And the lips, so used to close upon the wine-cup,
in laughter so often parted, they do not seem immobile, even now. Sad
that one so prodigally endowed as he was, with the three essentials of
a dandy--physical distinction, a sense of beauty and wealth or, if you
prefer the term, credit--should not have done greater things. Much of
his costume was merely showy or eccentric, without the rotund unity
of the perfect fop's. It had been well had he lacked that dash and
spontaneous gallantry that make him cut, it may be, a more attractive
figure than Beau Brummell. The youth of St. James's gave him a wonderful
welcome. The flight of Mr. Brummell had left them as sheep without a
shepherd. They had even cried out against the inscrutable decrees
of fashion and curtailed the height of their stocks. And (lo!) here,
ambling down the Mall with tasselled cane, laughing in the window at
White's or in Fop's Alley posturing, here, with the devil in his eyes
and all the graces at his elbow, was D'Orsay, the prince paramount who
should dominate London and should guard life from monotony by the daring
of his whims. He accepted so many engagements that he often dressed very
quickly both in the morning and at nightfall. His brilliant genius would
sometimes enable him to appear faultless, but at other times not even
his fine figure could quite dispel the shadow of a toilet too hastily
conceived. Before long he took that fatal step, his marriage with Lady
Harriet Gardiner. The marriage, as we all know, was not a happy one,
though the wedding was very pretty. It ruined the life of Lady Harriet
and of her mother, the Blessington. It won the poor Count further still
further from his art and sent him spinning here, there, and everywhere.
He was continually at Cleveden, or Belvoir, or Welbeck, laughing gaily
as he brought down our English partridges, or at Crockford's, smiling
as he swept up our English guineas from the board. Holker declares
that, excepting Mr. Turner, he was the finest equestrian in London and
describes how the mob would gather every morning round his door to see
him descend, insolent from his toilet, and mount and ride away. Indeed,
he surpassed us all in all the exercises of the body. He even essayed
preëminence in the arts (as if his own art were insufficient to his
vitality!) and was for ever penning impenuous verses for circulation
among his friends. There was no great harm in this, perhaps. Even the
handwriting of Mr. Brummell was not unknown in the albums. But D'Orsay's
painting of portraits is inexcusable. The aesthetic vision of a
dandy should be bounded by his own mirror. A few crayon sketches of
himself--dilectissimae imagines--are as much as he should ever do. That
D'Orsay's portraits, even his much-approved portrait of the Duke of
Wellington, are quite amateurish, is no excuse. It is the process
of painting which is repellent; to force from little tubes of lead a
glutinous flamboyance and to defile, with the hair of a camel therein
steeped, taut canvas, is hardly the diversion for a gentleman; and to
have done all this for a man who was admittedly a field-marshal....

I have often thought that this selfish concentration, which is a part
of dandyism, is also a symbol of that einsamkeit felt in greater or less
degree by the practitioners of every art. But, curiously enough, the
very unity of his mind with the ground he works on exposes the dandy to
the influence of the world. In one way dandyism is the least selfish
of all the arts. Musicians are seen and, except for a price, not heard.
Only for a price may you read what poets have written. All painters
are not so generous as Mr. Watts. But the dandy presents himself to the
nation whenever he sallies from his front door. Princes and peasants
alike may gaze upon his masterpieces. Now, any art which is pursued
directly under the eye of the public is always far more amenable
to fashion than is an art with which the public is but vicariously
concerned. Those standards to which artists have gradually accustomed it
the public will not see lightly set at naught. Very rigid, for example,
are the traditions of the theatre. If my brother were to declaim his
lines at the Haymarket in the florotund manner of Macready, what a row
there would be in the gallery! It is only by the impalpable process of
evolution that change comes to the theatre. Likewise in the sphere
of costume no swift rebellion can succeed, as was exemplified by the
Prince's effort to revive knee-breeches. Had his Royal Highness elected,
in his wisdom, to wear tight trousers strapped under his boots,
'smalls' might, in their turn, have reappeared, and at length--who
knows?--knee-breeches. It is only by the trifling addition or
elimination, modification or extension, made by this or that dandy and
copied by the rest, that the mode proceeds. The young dandy will find
certain laws to which he must conform. If he outrage them he will be
hooted by the urchins of the street, not unjustly, for he will have
outraged the slowly constructed laws of artists who have preceded him.
Let him reflect that fashion is no bondage imposed by alien hands, but
the last wisdom of his own kind, and that true dandyism is the result of
an artistic temperament working upon a fine body within the wide limits
of fashion. Through this habit of conformity, which it inculcates, the
army has given us nearly all our finest dandies, from Alcibiades to
Colonel Br*b*z*n de nos jours. Even Mr. Brummell, though he defied his
Colonel, must have owed some of his success to the military spirit. Any
parent intending his son to be a dandy will do well to send him first
into the army, there to learn humility, as did his archetype, Apollo, in
the house of Admetus. A sojourn at one of the Public Schools is also to
be commended. The University it were well to avoid.

Of course, the dandy, like any other artist, has moments when his own
period, palling, inclines him to antique modes. A fellow-student once
told me that, after a long vacation spent in touch with modern life, he
had hammered at the little gate of Merton and felt of a sudden his hat
assume plumes and an expansive curl, the impress of a ruff about his
neck, the dangle of a cloak and a sword. I, too, have my Eliza-bethan,
my Caroline moments. I have gone to bed Georgian and awoken Early
Victorian. Even savagery has charmed me. And at such times I have often
wished I could find in my wardrobe suitable costumes. But these modish
regrets are sterile, after all, and comprimend. What boots it to defy
the conventions of our time? The dandy is the 'child of his age,'
and his best work must be produced in accord with the age's natural
influence. The true dandy must always love contemporary costume. In this
age, as in all precedent ages, it is only the tasteless who cavil, being
impotent to win from it fair results. How futile their voices are!
The costume of the nineteenth century, as shadowed for us first by
Mr. Brummell, so quiet, so reasonable, and, I say emphatically, so
beautiful; free from folly or affectation, yet susceptible to exquisite
ordering; plastic, austere, economical, may not be ignored. I spoke of
the doom of swift rebellions, but I doubt even if any soever gradual
evolution will lead us astray from the general precepts of Mr.
Brummell's code. At every step in the progress of democracy those
precepts will be strengthened. Every day their fashion is more secure,
corroborate. They are acknowledged by the world. The barbarous costumes
that in bygone days were designed by class-hatred, or hatred of race,
are dying, very surely dying. The costermonger with his pearl-emblazoned
coat has been driven even from that Variety Stage, whereon he sought
a desperate sanctuary. The clinquant corslet of the Swiss girl just
survives at bals costumés. I am told that the kilt is now confined
entirely to certain of the soldiery and to a small cult of Scotch
Archaïcists. I have seen men flock from the boulevards of one capital
and from the avenues of another to be clad in Conduit Street. Even
into Oxford, that curious little city, where nothing is ever born nor
anything ever quite dies, the force of the movement has penetrated,
insomuch that tasselled cap and gown of degree are rarely seen in the
streets or colleges. In a place which was until recent times scarcely
less remote, Japan, the white and scarlet gardens are trod by men who
are shod in boots like our own, who walk--rather strangely still--in
close-cut cloth of little colour, and stop each other from time to time,
laughing to show how that they too can furl an umbrella after the manner
of real Europeans.

It is very nice, this universal acquiescence in the dress we have
designed, but, if we reflect, not wonderful. There are three apparent
reasons, and one of them is aesthetic. So to clothe the body that its
fineness be revealed and its meanness veiled has been the aesthetic aim
of all costume, but before our time the mean had never been struck. The
ancient Romans went too far. Muffled in the ponderous folds of a toga,
Adonis might pass for Punchinello, Punchinello for Adonis. The ancient
Britons, on the other hand, did not go far enough. And so it had been in
all ages down to that bright morning when Mr. Brummell, at his mirror,
conceived the notion of trousers and simple coats. Clad according to his
convention, the limbs of the weakling escape contempt, and the athlete
is unobtrusive, and all is well. But there is also a social reason for
the triumph of our costume--the reason of economy. That austerity, which
has rejected from its toilet silk and velvet and all but a few jewels,
has made more ample the wardrobes of Dives, and sent forth Irus nicely
dressed among his fellows. And lastly there is a reason of psychology,
most potent of all, perhaps. Is not the costume of today, with its
subtlety and sombre restraint, its quiet congruities of black and white
and grey, supremely apt a medium for the expression of modern emotion
and modern thought? That aptness, even alone, would explain its
triumph. Let us be glad that we have so easy, yet so delicate, a mode of
expression.

Yes! costume, dandiacal or not, is in the highest degree expressive,
nor is there any type it may not express. It enables us to classify any
'professional man' at a glance, be he lawyer, leech or what not. Still
more swift and obvious is its revelation of the work and the soul of
those who dress, whether naturally or for effect, without reference to
convention. The bowler of Mr. Jerome K. Jerome is a perfect preface
to all his works. The silk hat of Mr. Whistler is a real nocturne, his
linen a symphony en blanc majeur. To have seen Mr. Hall Caine is to have
read his soul. His flowing, formless cloak is as one of his own novels,
twenty-five editions latent in the folds of it. Melodrama crouches upon
the brim of his sombrero. His tie is a Publisher's Announcement. His
boots are Copyright. In his hand he holds the staff of The Family
Herald.

But the dandy, in no wise violating the laws of fashion, can make more
subtle symbols of his personality. More subtle these symbols are for
the very reason that they are effected within the restrictions which are
essential to an art. Chastened of all flamboyance, they are from most
men occult, obvious, it may be, only to other artists or even only to
him they symbolise. Nor will the dandy express merely a crude idea of
his personality, as does, for example, Mr. Hall Caine, dressing himself
always and exactly after one pattern. Every day as his mood has changed
since his last toilet, he will vary the colour, texture, form of his
costume. Fashion does not rob him of free will. It leaves him liberty of
all expression. Every day there is not one accessory, from the butterfly
that alights above his shirt front to the jewels planted in his linen,
that will not symbolise the mood that is in him or the occasion of the
coming day.

On this, the psychological side of foppery, I know not one so expert as
him whom, not greatly caring for contemporary names, I will call Mr. Le
V. No hero-worshipper am I, but I cannot write without enthusiasm of
his simple life. He has not spurred his mind to the quest of shadows
nor vexed his soul in the worship of any gods. No woman has wounded
his heart, though he has gazed gallantly into the eyes of many women,
intent, I fancy, upon his own miniature there. Nor is the incomparable
set of his trousers spoilt by the perching of any dear little child upon
his knee. And so, now that he is stricken with seventy years, he knows
none of the bitterness of eld, for his toilet-table is an imperishable
altar, his wardrobe a quiet nursery and very constant harem. Mr. Le V.
has many disciples, young men who look to him for guidance in all that
concerns costume, and each morning come, themselves tentatively clad, to
watch the perfect procedure of his toilet and learn invaluable lessons.
I myself, a lie-a-bed, often steal out, foregoing the best hours of the
day abed, that I may attend that levée. The rooms of the Master are in
St. James's Street, and perhaps it were well that I should give some
little record of them and of the manner of their use. In the first room
the Master sleeps. He is called by one of his valets, at seven o'clock,
to the second room, where he bathes, is shampooed, is manicured and, at
length, is enveloped in a dressing-gown of white wool. In the third
room is his breakfast upon a little table and his letters and some
newspapers. Leisurely he sips his chocolate, leisurely learns all that
need be known. With a cigarette he allows his temper, as informed by
the news and the weather and what not, to develop itself for the day.
At length, his mood suggests, imperceptibly, what colour, what form of
clothes he shall wear. He rings for his valet--'I will wear such and
such a coat, such and such a tie; my trousers shall be of this or that
tone; this or that jewel shall be radiant in the folds of my tie.' It is
generally near noon that he reaches the fourth room, the dressing-room.
The uninitiate can hardly realise how impressive is the ceremonial there
enacted. As I write, I can see, in memory, the whole scene--the room,
severely simple, with its lemon walls and deep wardrobes of white wood,
the young fops, philomathestatoi ton neaniskon, ranged upon a long
bench, rapt in wonder, and, in the middle, now sitting, now standing,
negligently, before a long mirror, with a valet at either elbow, Mr. Le
V., our cynosure. There is no haste, no faltering, when once the scheme
of the day's toilet has been set. It is a calm toilet. A flower does not
grow more calmly.

Any of us, any day, may see the gracious figure of Mr. Le V., as he
saunters down the slope of St. James's. Long may the sun irradiate the
surface of his tilted hat! It is comfortable to know that, though he
die to-morrow the world will not lack a most elaborate record of his
foppery. All his life he has kept or, rather, the current valets
have kept for him, a Journal de Toilette. Of this there are now fifty
volumes, each covering the space of a year. Yes, fifty springs have
filled his button-hole with their violets; the snow of fifty winters has
been less white than his linen; his boots have outshone fifty sequences
of summer suns, and the colours of all those autumns have faded in the
dry light of his apparel. The first page of each volume of the Journal
de Toilette bears the signature of Mr. Le V. and of his two valets. Of
the other pages each is given up, as in other diaries, to one day of
the year. In ruled spaces are recorded there the cut and texture of the
suit, the colour of the tie, the form of jewellery that was worn on the
day the page records. No detail is omitted and a separate space is set
aside for 'Remarks.' I remember that I once asked Mr. Le V., half
in jest, what he should wear on the Judgment Day. Seriously, and (I
fancied) with a note of pathos in his voice, he said to me, 'Young man,
you ask me to lay bare my soul to you. If I had been a saint I should
certainly wear a light suit, with a white waistcoat and a flower, but I
am no saint, sir, no saint.... I shall probably wear black trousers or
trousers of some very dark blue, and a frock-coat, tightly buttoned.'
Poor old Mr. Le V.! I think he need not fear. If there be a heaven for
the soul, there must be other heavens also, where the intellect and the
body shall be consummate. In both these heavens Mr. Le V. will have his
hierarchy. Of a life like his there can be no conclusion, really. Did
not even Matthew Arnold admit that conduct of a cane is three-fourths of
life?

Certainly Mr. Le V. is a great artist, and his supremacy is in the tact
with which he suits his toilet to his temperament. But the marvellous
affinity of a dandy's mood to his daily toilet is not merely that it
finds therein its perfect echo nor that it may even be, in reflex,
thereby accentuated or made less poignant. For some years I had felt
convinced that in a perfect dandy this affinity must reach a point, when
the costume itself, planned with the finest sensibility, would change
with the emotional changes of its wearer, automatically. But I felt that
here was one of those boundaries, where the fields of art align with the
fields of science, and I hardly dared to venture further. Moreover,
the theory was not easy to verify. I knew that, except in some great
emotional crisis, the costume could not palpably change its aspect.
Here was an impasse; for the perfect dandy--the Brummell, the Mr. Le
V.--cannot afford to indulge in any great emotion outside his art; like
Balzac, he has not time. The gods were good to me, however. One morning
near the end of last July, they decreed that I should pass through Half
Moon Street and meet there a friend who should ask me to go with him to
his club and watch for the results of the racing at Goodwood. This club
includes hardly any member who is not a devotee of the Turf, so that,
when we entered it, the cloak-room displayed long rows of unburdened
pegs--save where one hat shone. None but that illustrious dandy, Lord
X., wears quite so broad a brim as this hat had. I said that Lord X.
must be in the club.

'I conceive he is too nervous to be on the course,' my friend replied.
'They say he has plunged up to the hilt on to-day's running.'

His lordship was indeed there, fingering feverishly the sinuous ribands
of the tape-machine. I sat at a little distance, watching him. Two
results straggled forth within an hour, and, at the second of these,
I saw with wonder Lord X.'s linen actually flush for a moment and then
turn deadly pale. I looked again and saw that his boots had lost their
lustre. Drawing nearer, I found that grey hairs had begun to show
themselves in his raven coat. It was very painful and yet, to me, very
gratifying. In the cloak-room, when I went for my own hat and cane,
there was the hat with the broad brim, and (lo!) over its iron-blue
surface little furrows had been ploughed by Despair.

Rouen, 1896.




A Good Prince

I first saw him one morning of last summer, in the Green Park. Though
short, even insignificant, in stature and with an obvious tendency to be
obese, he had that unruffled, Olympian air, which is so sure a sign
of the Blood Royal. In a suit of white linen he looked serenely cool,
despite the heat. Perhaps I should have thought him, had I not been
versed in the Almanach de Gotha, a trifle older than he is. He did not
raise his hat in answer to my salute, but smiled most graciously and
made as though he would extend his hand to me, mistaking me, I doubt
not, for one of his friends. Forthwith, a member of his suite said
something to him in an undertone, whereat he smiled again and took no
further notice of me.

I do not wonder the people idolise him. His almost blameless life has
been passed among them, nothing in it hidden from their knowledge. When
they look upon his dear presentment in the photographer's window--the
shrewd, kindly eyes under the high forehead, the sparse locks so
carefully distributed--words of loyalty only and of admiration rise to
their lips. For of all princes in modern days he seems to fulfil most
perfectly the obligation of princely rank. Nêpios he might have been
called in the heroic age, when princes were judged according to their
mastery of the sword or of the bow, or have seemed, to those mediaeval
eyes that loved to see a scholar's pate under the crown, an ignoramus.
We are less exigent now. We do but ask of our princes that they should
live among us, be often manifest to our eyes, set a perpetual example of
a right life. We bid them be the ornaments of our State. Too often
they do not attain to our ideal. They give, it may be, a half-hearted
devotion to soldiering, or pursue pleasure merely--tales of their
frivolity raising now and again the anger of a public swift to envy them
their temptations. But against this admirable Prince no such charges can
be made. Never (as yet, at least) has he cared to 'play at soldiers.'
By no means has he shocked the Puritans. Though it is no secret that he
prefers the society of ladies, not one breath of scandal has ever tinged
his name. Of how many English princes could this be said, in days when
Figaro, quill in hand, inclines his ear to every key-hole?

Upon the one action that were well obliterated from his record I need
not long insist. It seems that the wife of an aged ex-Premier came to
have an audience and pay her respects. Hardly had she spoken when the
Prince, in a fit of unreasoning displeasure, struck her a violent blow
with his clenched fist. Had His Royal Highness not always stood so far
aloof from political contention, it had been easier to find a motive for
this unmannerly blow. The incident is deplorable, but it belongs,
after all, to an earlier period of his life; and, were it not that no
appreciation must rest upon the suppression of any scandal, I should not
have referred to it. For the rest, I find no stain, soever faint, upon
his life. The simplicity of his tastes is the more admirable for that he
is known to care not at all for what may be reported in the newspapers.
He has never touched a card, never entered a play-house. In no stud of
racers has he indulged, preferring to the finest blood-horse ever bred a
certain white and woolly lamb with a blue riband to its neck. This he
is never tired of fondling. It is with him, like the roebuck of Henri
Quatre, wherever he goes.

Suave and simple his life is! Narrow in range, it may be, but with every
royal appurtenance of delight, for to him Love's happy favours are given
and the tribute of glad homage, always, here and there and every other
where. Round the flower-garden at Sandringham runs an old wall of red
brick, streaked with ivy and topped infrequently with balls of stone.
By its iron gates, that open to a vista of flowers, stand two kind
policemen, guarding the Prince's procedure along that bright vista.
As his perambulator rolls out of the gate of St. James's Palace, he
stretches out his tiny hands to the scarlet sentinels. An obsequious
retinue follows him over the lawns of the White Lodge, cooing and
laughing, blowing kisses and praising him. Yet do not imagine his life
has been all gaiety! The afflictions that befall royal personages always
touch very poignantly the heart of the people, and it is not too much to
say that all England watched by the cradle-side of Prince Edward in that
dolorous hour, when first the little battlements rose about the rose-red
roof of his mouth. I am glad to think that not one querulous word did
His Royal Highness, in his great agony, utter. They only say that his
loud, incessant cries bore testimony to the perfect lungs for which the
House of Hanover is most justly famed. Irreiterate be the horror of that
epoch!

As yet, when we know not even what his first words will be, it is too
early to predict what verdict posterity will pass upon him. Already he
has won the hearts of the people; but, in the years which, it is to be
hoped, still await him, he may accomplish more. Attendons! He stands
alone among European princes--but, as yet, only with the aid of a chair.

London, 1895.




1880

     Say, shall these things be forgotten
     In the Row that men call Rotten,
     Beauty Clare?--Hamilton Aïdé.

'History,' it has been said, 'does not repeat itself. The historians
repeat one another.' Now, there are still some periods with which no
historian has grappled, and, strangely enough, the period that most
greatly fascinates me is one of them. The labour I set myself is
therefore rather Herculean. But it is also, for me, so far a labour of
love that I can quite forget or even revel in its great difficulty. I
would love to have lived in those bygone days, when first society was
inducted into the mysteries of art and, not losing yet its old and
elegant tenue, babbled of blue china and white lilies, of the painter
Rossetti and the poet Swinburne. It would be a splendid thing to have
seen the tableaux at Cromwell House or to have made my way through the
Fancy Fair and bartered all for a cigarette from a shepherdess; to have
walked in the Park, straining my eyes for a glimpse of the Jersey
Lily; danced the livelong afternoon to the strains of the Manola Valse;
clapped holes in my gloves for Connie Gilchrist.

It is a pity that the historians have held back so long. For this
period is now so remote from us that much in it is nearly impossible to
understand, more than a little must be left in the mists of antiquity
that involve it. The memoirs of the day are, indeed, many, but not
exactly illuminative. From such writers as Frith, Montague Williams or
the Bancrofts, you may gain but little peculiar knowledge. That quaint
old chronicler, Lucy, dilates amusingly enough upon the frown of Sir
Richard (afterwards Lord) Cross or the tea-rose in the Prime Minister's
button-hole. But what can he tell us of the negotiations that led
Gladstone back to public life or of the secret councils of the Fourth
Party, whereby Sir Stafford was gradually eclipsed? Good memoirs must
ever be the cumulation of gossip. Gossip (alas!) has been killed by the
Press. In the tavern or the barber's-shop, all secrets passed into every
ear. From newspapers how little can be culled! Manifestations are there
made manifest to us and we are taught, with tedious iteration, the
things we knew, and need not have known, before. In my research, I have
had only such poor guides as Punch, or the London Charivari and The
Queen, the Lady's Newspaper. Excavation, which in the East has been
productive of rich material for the archaeologist, was indeed suggested
to me. I was told that, just before Cleopatra's Needle was set upon the
Embankment, an iron box, containing a photograph of Mrs. Langtry,
some current coins and other trifles of the time, was dropped into the
foundation. I am sure much might be done with a spade, here and there,
in the neighbourhood of old Cromwell House. Accursed be the obduracy
of vestries! Be not I, but they, blamed for any error, obscurity or
omission in my brief excursus.

The period of 1880 and of the two successive years should ever be
memorable, for it marks a great change in the constitution of English
society. It would seem that, under the quiet régime of the Tory Cabinet,
the upper ten thousand (as they were quaintly called in those days,) had
taken a somewhat more frigid tone. The Prince of Wales had inclined to
be restful after the revels of his youth. The prolonged seclusion
of Queen Victoria, who was then engaged upon that superb work of
introspection and self-analysis, More Leaves from the Highlands, had
begun to tell upon the social system. Balls and other festivities, both
at Court and in the houses of the nobles, were notably fewer. The vogue
of the Opera was passing. Even in the top of the season, Rotten Row, I
read, was not impenetrably crowded. But in 1880 came the tragic fall of
Disraeli and the triumph of the Whigs. How great a change came then
upon Westminster must be known to any one who has studied the annals of
Gladstone's incomparable Parliament. Gladstone himself, with a monstrous
majority behind him, revelling in the old splendour of speech that not
seventy summers nor six years' sulking had made less; Parnell, deadly,
mysterious, with his crew of wordy peasants that were to set all Saxon
things at naught--the activity of these two men alone would have made
this Parliament supremely stimulating throughout the land. What of young
Randolph Churchill, who, despite his halting speech, foppish mien and
rather coarse fibre of mind, was yet the greatest Parliamentarian of his
day? What of Justin Huntly McCarthy, under his puerile mask a most dark,
most dangerous conspirator, who, lightly swinging the sacred lamp of
burlesque, irradiated with fearful clarity the wrath and sorrow of
Ireland? What of Blocker Warton? What of the eloquent atheist, Charles
Bradlaugh, pleading at the Bar, striding past the furious Tories to
the very Mace, hustled down the stone steps with the broadcloth torn in
ribands from his back? Surely such scenes will never more be witnessed
at St. Stephen's. Imagine the existence of God being made a party
question! No wonder that at a time of such turbulence fine society also
should have shown the primordia of a great change. It was felt that
the aristocracy could not live by good-breeding alone. The old delights
seemed vapid, waxen. Something vivid was desired. And so the sphere of
fashion converged with the sphere of art, and revolution was the result.

Be it remembered that long before this time there had been in the heart
of Chelsea a kind of cult for Beauty. Certain artists had settled
there, deliberately refusing to work in the ordinary official way, and
'wrought,' as they were wont to asseverate, 'for the pleasure and sake
of all that is fair.' Little commerce had they with the brazen world.
Nothing but the light of the sun would they share with men. Quietly and
unbeknown, callous of all but their craft, they wrought their poems
or their pictures, gave them one to another, and wrought on. Meredith,
Rossetti, Swinburne, Morris, Holman Hunt were in this band of shy
artificers. In fact, 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 mobled in the fogs, and bank-clerks, versed in the
writings of Mr. Hamerton, 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.

Aestheticism (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 delightful 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 tea-fights, 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 his
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.

Autrement, there was Coombe Wood, in whose shade the Lady Archibald
Campbell suffered more than one of Shakespeare's plays to be enacted.
Hither, from the garish, indelicate theatre that held her languishing,
Thalia was bidden, if haply, under the open sky, she might resume her
old charm. All Fashion came to marvel and so did all the Aesthetes, in
the heart of one of whose leaders, Godwin, that superb architect, the
idea was first conceived. Real Pastoral Plays! Lest the invited guests
should get any noxious scent of the footlights across the grass, only
amateurs were accorded parts. They roved through a real wood, these
jerkined amateurs, with the poet's music upon their lips. Never under
such dark and griddled elms had the outlaws feasted upon their venison.
Never had any Rosalind traced with such shy wonder the writing of her
lover upon the bark, nor any Orlando won such laughter for his not
really sportive dalliance. Fairer than the mummers, it may be, were the
ladies who sat and watched them from the lawn. All of them wore jerseys
and tied-back skirts. Zulu hats shaded their eyes from the sun. Bangles
shimmered upon their wrists. And the gentlemen wore light frock-coats
and light top-hats with black bands. And the aesthetes were in
velveteen, carrying lilies.

Not that Art and Fashion shunned the theatre. They began in 1880 to
affect it as never before. The one invaded Irving's premières at the
Lyceum. The other sang paeans in praise of the Bancrofts. The French
plays, too, were the feigned delight of all the modish world. Not to
have seen Chaumont in Totot chez Tata was held a solecism. The homely
mesdames and messieurs from the Parisian boards were 'lionised' (how
strangely that phrase rings to modern ears!) in ducal drawing-rooms.
In fact, all the old prejudice of rank was being swept away. Even more
significant than the reception of players was a certain effort, made at
this time, to raise the average of aristocratic loveliness--an effort
that, but a few years before, would have been surely scouted as
quite undignified and outrageous. What the term 'Professional Beauty'
signified, how any lady gained a right to it, we do not and may never
know. It is certain, however, that there were many ladies of tone, upon
whom it was bestowed. They received special attention from the Prince of
Wales, and hostesses would move heaven and earth to have them in their
rooms. Their photographs were on sale in the window of every shop.
Crowds assembled every morning to see them start from Rotten Row.
Preëminent among Professional Beauties were Lady Lonsdale (afterwards
Lady de Grey), Mrs. Wheeler, who always 'appeared in black,' and Mrs.
Corowallis West, who was Amy Robsart in the tableaux at Cromwell House,
when Mrs. Langtry, cette Cléopatre de son siècle appeared also, stepping
across an artificial brook, in the pink kirtle of Effie Deans. We may
doubt whether the movement, represented by these ladies, was quite in
accord with the dignity and elegance that always should mark the best
society. Any effort to make Beauty compulsory robs Beauty of its chief
charm. But, at the same time, I do believe that this movement, so far as
it was informed by a real wish to raise a practical standard of feminine
charm for all classes, does not deserve the strictures that have been
passed upon it by posterity. One of its immediate sequels was the
incursion of American ladies into London. Then it was that these pretty
creatures, 'clad in Worth's most elegant confections,' drawled their way
through our greater portals. Fanned, as they were, by the feathers of
the Prince of Wales, they had a great success, and they were so strange
that their voices and their dresses were mimicked partout. The English
beauties were rather angry, especially with the Prince, whom alone they
blamed for the vogue of their rivals. History credits His Royal Highness
with many notable achievements. Not the least of these is that he
discovered the inhabitants of America.

It will be seen that in this renaissance the keenest students of the
exquisite were women. Nevertheless, men were not idle, neither. Since
the day of Mr. Brummell and King George, the noble art of self-adornment
had fallen partially desuete. Great fops like Bulwer and le jeune
Cupidon had come upon the town, but never had they formed a school.
Dress, therefore, had become simpler, wardrobes smaller, fashions apt to
linger. In 1880 arose the sect that was soon to win for itself the title
of 'The Mashers.' What this title exactly signified I suppose no two
etymologists will ever agree. But we can learn clearly enough, from the
fashion-plates of the day, what the Mashers were in outward semblance;
from the lampoons, their mode of life. Unlike the dandies of
the Georgian era, they pretended to no classic taste and, wholly
contemptuous of the Aesthetes, recognised no art save the art of dress.
Much might be written about the Mashers. The restaurant--destined to be,
in after years, so salient a delight of London--was not known to them,
but they were often admirable upon the steps of clubs. The Lyceum held
them never, but nightly they gathered at the Gaiety Theatre. Nightly
the stalls were agog with small, sleek heads surmounting collars of
interminable height. Nightly, in the foyer, were lisped the praises of
Kate Vaughan, her graceful dancing, or of Nellie Farren, her matchless
fooling. Never a night passed but the dreary stage-door was cinct with a
circlet of fools bearing bright bouquets, of flaxen-headed fools who
had feet like black needles, and graceful fools incumbent upon canes.
A strange cult! I once knew a lady whose father was actually present at
the first night of 'The Forty Thieves,' and fell enamoured of one of the
coryphées. By such links is one age joined to another.

There is always something rather absurd about the past. For us, who have
fared on, the silhouette of Error is sharp upon the past horizon. As
we look back upon any period, its fashions seem grotesque, its ideals
shallow, for we know how soon those ideals and those fashions were to
perish, and how rightly; nor can we feel a little of the fervour they
did inspire. It is easy to laugh at these Mashers, with their fantastic
raiment and languid lives, or at the strife of the Professional
Beauties. It is easy to laugh at all that ensued when first the mummers
and the stainers of canvas strayed into Mayfair. Yet shall I laugh? For
me the most romantic moment of a pantomime is always when the winged and
wired fairies begin to fade away, and, as they fade, clown and pantaloon
tumble on joppling and grimacing, seen very faintly in that indecisive
twilight. The social condition of 1880 fascinates me in the same way.
Its contrasts fascinate me.

Perhaps, in my study of the period, I may have fallen so deeply beneath
its spell that I have tended, now and again, to overrate its real
import. I lay no claim to the true historical spirit. I fancy it was a
chalk drawing of a girl in a mob-cap, signed 'Frank Miles, 1880,'
that first impelled me to research. To give an accurate and exhaustive
account of that period would need a far less brilliant pen than mine.
But I hope that, by dealing, even so briefly as I have dealt, with its
more strictly sentimental aspects, I may have lightened the task of the
scientific historian. And I look to Professor Gardiner and to the Bishop
of Oxford.

'Cromwell House.' The residence of Lady Freake, a famous hostess of the
day and founder of a brilliant salon, 'where even Royalty was sure of a
welcome. The writer of a recent monograph declares that, 'many a modern
hostess would do well to emulate Lady Freake, not only in her taste for
the Beautiful in Art but also for the Intellectual in Conversation.'

'Fancy Fair.' For a full account of this function, see pp. 102-124 of
the 'Annals of the Albert Hall.'

'Jersey Lily.' A fanciful title bestowed, at this time, upon the
beautiful Mrs. Langtry, who was a native of Jersey Island.

'Manola Valse.' Supposed to have been introduced by Albert Edward,
Prince of Wales, who, having heard it in Vienna, was pleased, for
a while, by its novelty, but soon reverted to the more sprightly
deux-temps.

'Private Views.' This passage, which I found in a contemporary
chronicle, is so quaint and so instinct with the spirit of its time that
I am fain to quote it:

'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 flowing
garment that Albert Durer might have designed for a mantle. There were
fashionable costumes that Mrs. Mason or Madame Eliot 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 garments of the saddest green. A hat in an agony of pushes 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 Mater Dolorosa hung
by the side of a jauntily-striped Langtry-hood.'

The 'Master.' By this title his disciples used to address James
Whistler, the author-artist. Without echoing the obloquy that was
lavished at first nor the praise that was lavished later upon his
pictures, we must admit that he was, as least, a great master of English
prose and a controversialist of no mean power.

'Masher.' One authority derives the title, rather ingeniously, from 'Ma
Chère,' the mode of address used by the gilded youth to the barmaids of
the period--whence the corruption, 'Masher.' Another traces it to
the chorus of a song, which, at that time, had a great vogue in the
music-halls: 'I'm the slashing, dashing, mashing Montmorency of the
day.' This, in my opinion, is the safer suggestion, and may be adopted.

London, 1894.




King George The Fourth

They say that when King George was dying, a special form of prayer for
his recovery, composed by one of the Archbishops, was read aloud to him
and that His Majesty, after saying Amen 'thrice, with great fervour,'
begged that his thanks might be conveyed to its author. To the student
of royalty in modern times there is something rather suggestive in this
incident. I like to think of the drug-scented room at Windsor and of the
King, livid and immobile among his pillows, waiting, in superstitious
awe, for the near moment when he must stand, a spirit, in the presence
of a perpetual King. I like to think of him following the futile prayer
with eyes and lips, and then, custom resurgent in him and a touch of
pride that, so long as the blood moved ever so little in his veins,
he was still a king, expressing a desire that the dutiful feeling and
admirable taste of the Prelate should receive a suitable acknowledgment.
It would have been impossible for a real monarch like George, even after
the gout had turned his thoughts heavenward, really to abase himself
before his Maker. But he could, so to say, treat with Him, as he might
have treated with a fellow-sovereign, in a formal way, long after
diplomacy was quite useless. How strange it must be to be a king! How
delicate and difficult a task it is to judge him! So far as I know,
no attempt has been made to judge King George the Fourth fairly. The
hundred and one eulogies and lampoons, irresponsibly published during
and immediately after his reign, are not worth a wooden hoop in Hades.
Mr. Percy Fitzgerald has published a history of George's reign, in which
he has so artistically subordinated his own personality to his subject,
that I can scarcely find, from beginning to end of the two bulky
volumes, a single opinion expressed, a single idea, a single deduction
from the admirably-ordered facts. All that most of us know of George
is from Thackeray's brilliant denunciation. Now, I yield to few in my
admiration of Thackeray's powers. He had a charming style. We never
find him searching for the mot juste as for a needle in a bottle of hay.
Could he have looked through a certain window by the river at Croisset
or in the quadrangle at Brasenose, how he would have laughed! He blew on
his pipe, and words came tripping round him, like children, like pretty
little children who are perfectly drilled for the dance, or came, did he
will it, treading in their precedence, like kings, gloomily. And I think
it is to the credit of the reading mob that, by reason of his beautiful
style, all that he said was taken for the truth, without questioning.
But truth after all is eternal, and style transient, and now that
Thackeray's style is becoming, if I may say so, a trifle 1860, it may
not be amiss that we should inquire whether his estimate of George is in
substance and fact worth anything at all. It seems to me that, as in his
novels, so in his history of the four Georges, Thackeray made no attempt
at psychology. He dealt simply with types. One George he insisted upon
regarding as a buffoon, another as a yokel. The Fourth George he chose
to hold up for reprobation as a drunken, vapid cad. Every action, every
phase of his life that went to disprove this view, he either suppressed
or distorted utterly. 'History,' he would seem to have chuckled, 'has
nothing to do with the First Gentleman. But I will give him a niche in
Natural History. He shall be King of the Beasts.' He made no allowance
for the extraordinary conditions under which all monarchs live, none for
the unfortunate circumstances by which George, especially, was from the
first hampered. He judged him as he judged Barnes Newcome and all the
scoundrels lie created. Moreover, he judged him by the moral standard of
the Victorian Age. In fact, he applied to his subject the wrong method,
in the wrong manner, and at the wrong time. And yet every one has taken
him at his word. I feel that my essay may be scouted as a paradox; but
I hope that many may recognise that I am not, out of mere boredom,
endeavouring to stop my ears against popular platitude, but rather, in
a spirit of real earnestness, to point out to the mob how it has been
cruel to George. I do not despair of success. I think I shall make
converts. The mob is really very fickle and sometimes cheers the truth.

None, at all events, will deny that England stands to-day otherwise
than she stood a hundred and thirty-two years ago, when George was born.
To-day we are living a decadent life. All the while that we are
prating of progress, we are really so deteriorate! There is nothing but
feebleness in us. Our youths, who spend their days in trying to build
up their constitutions by sport or athletics and their evenings in
undermining them with poisonous and dyed drinks; our daughters, who are
ever searching for some new quack remedy for new imaginary megrim, what
strength is there in them? We have our societies for the prevention of
this and the promotion of that and the propagation of the other,
because there are no individuals among us. Our sexes are already nearly
assimilate. Women are becoming nearly as rare as ladies, and it is only
at the music-halls that we are privileged to see strong men. We are born
into a poor, weak age. We are not strong enough to be wicked, and the
Nonconformist Conscience makes cowards of us all.

But this was not so in the days when George was walking by his tutor's
side in the gardens of Kew or of Windsor. London must have been a
splendid place in those days--full of life and colour and wrong and
revelry. There was no absurd press nor vestry to protect the poor at the
expense of the rich and see that everything should be neatly adjusted.
Every man had to shift for himself and, consequently, men were, as Mr.
Clement Scott would say, manly, and women, as Mr. Clement Scott would
say, womanly. In those days, a young man of wealth and family found
open to him a vista of such licence as had been unknown to any since
the barbatuli of the Roman Empire. To spend the early morning with his
valet, gradually assuming the rich apparel that was not then tabooed
by a hard sumptuary standard; to saunter round to White's for ale and
tittle-tattle and the making of wagers; to attend a 'drunken déjeuner'
in honour of 'la très belle Rosaliné or the Strappini; to drive some
fellow-fool far out into the country in his pretty curricle, 'followed
by two well-dressed and well-mounted grooms, of singular elegance
certainly,' and stop at every tavern on the road to curse the host for
not keeping better ale and a wench of more charm; to reach St. James's
in time for a random toilet and so off to dinner. Which of our dandies
could survive a day of pleasure such as this? Which would be ready,
dinner done, to scamper off again to Ranelagh and dance and skip and sup
in the rotunda there? Yet the youth of that period would not dream
of going to bed or ever he had looked in at Crockford's--tanta lubido
rerum--for a few hours' faro.

This was the kind of life that young George found opened to him, when,
at length, in his nineteenth year, they gave him an establishment in
Buckingham House. How his young eyes must have sparkled, and with what
glad gasps must he have taken the air of freedom into his lungs!
Rumour had long been busy with the damned surveillance under which his
childhood had been passed. A paper of the time says significantly that
'the Prince of Wales, with a spirit which does him honour, has three
times requested a change in that system.' King George had long postponed
permission for his son to appear at any balls, and the year before had
only given it, lest he should offend the Spanish Minister, who begged
it as a personal favour. I know few pictures more pathetic than that of
George, then an overgrown boy of fourteen, tearing the childish frill
from around his neck and crying to one of the Royal servants, 'See how
they treat me! 'Childhood has always seemed to me the tragic period of
life. To be subject to the most odious espionage at the one age when you
never dream of doing wrong, to be deceived by your parents, thwarted of
your smallest wish, oppressed by the terrors of manhood and of the world
to come, and to believe, as you are told, that childhood is the only
happiness known; all this is quite terrible. And all Royal children,
of whom I have read, particularly George, seem to have passed through
greater trials in childhood than do the children of any other class.
Mr. Fitzgerald, hazarding for once an opinion, thinks that 'the
stupid, odious, German, sergeant-system of discipline that had been so
rigorously applied was, in fact, responsible for the blemishes of the
young Prince's character.' Even Thackeray, in his essay upon George III.,
asks what wonder that the son, finding himself free at last, should have
plunged, without looking, into the vortex of dissipation. In Torrens'
Life of Lord Melbourne we learn that Lord Essex, riding one day with the
King, met the young Prince wearing a wig, and that the culprit, being
sternly reprimanded by his father, replied that he had 'been ordered
by his doctor to wear a wig, for he was subject to cold.' Whereupon the
King, to vent the aversion he already felt for his son, or, it may have
been, glorying in the satisfactory result of his discipline, turned to
Lord Essex and remarked, 'A lie is ever ready when it is wanted.' George
never lost this early-ingrained habit of lies. It is to George's childish
fear of his guardians that we must trace that extraordinary power
of bamboozling his courtiers, his ministry, and his mistresses that
distinguished him through his long life. It is characteristic of the man
that he should himself have bitterly deplored his own untruthfulness.
When, in after years, he was consulting Lady Spencer upon the choice of
a governess for his child, he made this remarkable speech, 'Above all,
she must be taught the truth. You know that I don't speak the truth and
my brothers don't, and I find it a great defect, from which I would have
my daughter free. We have been brought up badly, the Queen having taught
us to equivocate.' You may laugh at the picture of the little chubby,
curly-headed fellows learning to equivocate at their mother's knee, but
pray remember that the wisest master of ethics himself, in his theory
of hexeis apodeiktikai, similarly raised virtues, such as telling the
truth, to the level of regular accomplishments, and, before you judge
poor George harshly in his entanglements of lying, think of the cruelly
unwise education he had undergone.

However much we may deplore this exaggerated tyranny, by reason of
its evil effect upon his moral nature, we cannot but feel glad that it
existed, to afford a piquant contrast to the life awaiting him. Had he
passed through the callow dissipations of Eton and Oxford, like other
young men of his age, he would assuredly have lacked much of that
splendid, pent vigour with which he rushed headlong into London life.
He was so young and so handsome and so strong, that can we wonder if all
the women fell at his feet? 'The graces of his person,' says one whom he
honoured by an intrigue, 'the irresistible sweetness of his smile, the
tenderness of his melodious, yet manly voice, will be remembered by me
till every vision of this changing scene are forgotten. The polished
and fascinating ingenuousness of his manners contributed not a little
to enliven our promenade. He sang with exquisite taste, and the tones of
his voice, breaking on the silence of the night, have often appeared
to my entranced senses like more than mortal melody.' But besides his
graces of person, he had a most delightful wit, he was a scholar who
could bandy quotations with Fox or Sheridan, and, like the young men
of to-day, he knew all about Art. He spoke French, Italian, and German
perfectly. Crossdill had taught him the violoncello. At first, as was
right for one of his age, he cared more for the pleasures of the table
and of the ring, for cards and love. He was wont to go down to Ranelagh
surrounded by a retinue of bruisers--rapscallions, such as used to
follow Clodius through the streets of Rome--and he loved to join in the
scuffles like any commoner. Pugilism he learnt from Angelo, and he was
considered by some to be a fine performer. On one occasion, too, at an
exposition d'escrime, when he handled the foils against the maître, he
'was highly complimented upon his graceful postures.' In fact, despite
all his accomplishments, he seems to have been a thoroughly manly young
fellow. He was just the kind of figure-head Society had long been in
need of. A certain lack of tone had crept into the amusements of the
haut monde, due, doubtless, to the lack of an acknowledged leader. The
King was not yet mad, but he was always bucolic, and socially out of the
question. So at the coming of his son Society broke into a gallop.
Balls and masquerades were given in his honour night after night.
Good Samaritans must have approved when they found that at these
entertainments great ladies and courtesans brushed beautiful shoulders
in utmost familiarity, but those who delighted in the high charm of
society probably shook their heads. We need not, however, find it a flaw
in George's social bearing that he did not check this kind of freedom. At
the first, as a young man full of life, of course he took everything as
it came, joyfully. No one knew better than he did, in later life, that
there is a time for laughing with great ladies and a time for laughing
with courtesans. But as yet it was not possible for him to exert
influence. How great that influence became I will suggest hereafter.

I like to think of him as he was at this period, charging about, in
pursuit of pleasure, like a young bull. The splendid taste for building
had not yet come to him. His father would not hear of him patronising
the Turf. But already he was implected with a passion for dress and
seems to have erred somewhat on the side of dressing up, as is the way
of young men. It is fearful to think of him, as Cyrus Redding saw
him, 'arrayed in deep-brown velvet, silver embroidered, with cut-steel
buttons, and a gold net thrown over all.' Before that 'gold net thrown
over all,' all the mistakes of his afterlife seem to me to grow almost
insignificant. Time, however, toned his too florid sense of costume, and
we should at any rate be thankful that his imagination never deserted
him. All the delightful munditiae that we find in the contemporary
'fashion-plates for gentlemen' can be traced to George himself. His
were the much-approved 'quadruple stock of great dimension,' the 'cocked
grey-beaver,' 'the pantaloons of mauve silk negligently crinkled' and
any number of other little pomps and foibles of the kind. As he grew
older and was obliged to abandon many of his more vigorous pastimes, he
grew more and more enamoured of the pleasures of the wardrobe. He would
spend hours, it is said, in designing coats for his friends, liveries
for his servants, and even uniforms. Nor did he ever make the mistake of
giving away outmoded clothes to his valets, but kept them to form what
must have been the finest collection of clothes that has been seen in
modern times. With a sentimentality that is characteristic of him, he
would often, as he sat, crippled by gout, in his room at Windsor, direct
his servant to bring him this or that coat, which he had worn ten or
twenty or thirty years before, and, when it was brought to him, spend
much time in laughing or sobbing over the memories that lay in its
folds. It is pleasant to know that George, during his long and various
life, never forgot a coat, however long ago worn, however seldom.

But in the early days of which I speak he had not yet touched that
self-conscious note which, in manner and mode of life, as well as in
costume, he was to touch later. He was too violently enamoured of all
around him, to think very deeply of himself. But he had already realised
the tragedy of the voluptuary, which is, after a little time, not that
he must go on living, but that he cannot live in two places at once.
We have, at this end of the century, tempered this tragedy by the
perfection of railways, and it is possible for our good Prince, whom
Heaven bless, to waken to the sound of the Braemar bagpipes, while the
music of Mdlle. Guilbert's latest song, cooed over the footlights of
the Concerts Parisiens, still rings in his ears. But in the time of our
Prince's illustrious great-uncle there were not railways; and we find
George perpetually driving, for wagers, to Brighton and back (he had
already acquired that taste for Brighton which was one of his most
loveable qualities) in incredibly short periods of time. The rustics
who lived along the road were well accustomed to the sight of a high,
tremulous phaeton flashing past them, and the crimson face of the
young Prince bending over the horses. There is something absurd in
representing George as, even before he came of age, a hardened and
cynical profligate, an Elagabalus in trousers. His blood flowed fast
enough through his veins. All his escapades were those of a healthful
young man of the time. Need we blame him if he sought, every day, to
live faster and more fully?

In a brief essay like this, I cannot attempt to write, as I hope one day
to do, in any detail a history of George's career, during the time when
he was successively Prince of Wales and Regent and King. Merely is it my
wish at present to examine some of the principal accusations that have
been brought against him, and to point out in what ways he has been
harshly and hastily judged. Perhaps the greatest indignation against
him was, and is to this day, felt by reason of his treatment of his two
wives, Mrs. Fitzherbert and Queen Caroline. There are some scandals that
never grow old, and I think the story of George's married life is one of
them. It was a real scandal. I can feel it. It has vitality. Often have
I wondered whether the blood with which the young Prince's shirt was
saturate when Mrs. Fitzherbert was first induced to visit him at Carlton
House, was merely red paint, or if, in a frenzy of love, he had truly
gashed himself with a razor. Certain it is that his passion for the
virtuous and obdurate lady was a very real one. Lord Holland describes
how the Prince used to visit Mrs. Fox, and there indulge in 'the most
extravagant expressions and actions--rolling on the floor, striking his
forehead, tearing his hair, falling into hysterics, and swearing that he
would abandon the country, forego the crown, &c.' He was indeed still
a child, for Royalties, not being ever brought into contact with the
realities of life, remain young far longer than other people. Cursed
with a truly royal lack of self-control, he was unable to bear the
idea of being thwarted in any wish. Every day he sent off couriers to
Holland, whither Mrs. Fitzherbert had retreated, imploring her to return
to him, offering her formal marriage. At length, as we know, she yielded
to his importunity and returned. It is difficult indeed to realise
exactly what was Mrs. Fitzherbert's feeling in the matter. The marriage
must be, as she knew, illegal, and would lead, as Charles James Fox
pointed out in his powerful letter to the Prince, to endless and
intricate difficulties. For the present she could only live with him as
his mistress. If, when he reached the legal age of twenty-five, he were
to apply to Parliament for permission to marry her, how could permission
be given, when she had been living with him irregularly? Doubtless, she
was flattered by the attentions of the Heir to the Throne, but, had she
really returned his passion, she would surely have preferred 'any other
species of connection with His Royal Highness to one leading to so much
misery and mischief.' Really to understand her marriage, one must look
at the portraits of her that are extant. That beautiful and silly face
explains much. One can well fancy such a lady being pleased to live
after the performance of a mock-ceremony with a prince for whom she felt
no passion. Her view of the matter can only have been social, for,
in the eyes of the Church, she could only live with the Prince as his
mistress. Society, however, once satisfied that a ceremony of some kind
had been enacted, never regarded her as anything but his wife. The day
after Fox, inspired by the Prince, had formally denied that any ceremony
had taken place, 'the knocker of her door,' to quote her own complacent
phrase, 'was never still.' The Duchesses of Portland, Devonshire and
Cumber-land were among her visitors.

How much pop-limbo has been talked about the Prince's denial of the
marriage! I grant that it was highly improper to marry Mrs. Fitzherbert
at all. But George was always weak and wayward, and he did, in his great
passion, marry her. That he should afterwards deny it officially seems
to me to have been utterly inevitable. His denial did her not the
faintest damage, as I have pointed out. It was, so to speak, an official
quibble, rendered necessary by the circumstances of the case. Not to
have denied the marriage in the House of Commons would have meant ruin
to both of them. As months passed, more serious difficulties awaited the
unhappily wedded pair. What boots it to repeat the story of the Prince's
great debts and desperation? It was clear that there was but one way
of getting his head above water, and that was to yield to his father's
wishes and contract a real marriage with a foreign princess. Fate was
dogging his footsteps relentlessly. Placed as he was, George could not
but offer to marry as his father willed. It is well, also, to remember
that George was not ruthlessly and suddenly turning his shoulder upon
Mrs. Fitzherbert. For some time before the British plenipotentiary went
to fetch him a bride from over the waters, his name had been associated
with that of the beautiful and unscrupulous Countess of Jersey.

Poor George! Half-married to a woman whom he no longer worshipped,
compelled to marry a woman whom he was to hate at first sight! Surely
we should not judge a prince harshly. 'Princess Caroline very gauche
at cards,' 'Princess Caroline very missish at supper,' are among the
entries made in his diary by Lord Malmesbury, while he was at the little
German Court. I can conceive no scene more tragic than that of her
presentation to the Prince, as related by the same nobleman. 'I,
according to the established etiquette,' so he writes, 'introduced
the Princess Caroline to him. She, very properly, in consequence of my
saying it was the right mode of proceeding, attempted to kneel to him.
He raised her gracefully enough, and embraced her, said barely one word,
turned round, retired to a distant part of the apartment, and calling
to me, said: 'Harris, I am not well: pray get me a glass of brandy.' At
dinner that evening, in the presence of her betrothed, the Princess
was 'flippant, rattling, affecting wit.' Poor George, I say again!
Deportment was his ruling passion, and his bride did not know how to
behave. Vulgarity--hard, implacable, German vulgarity--was in everything
she did to the very day of her death. The marriage was solemnised on
Wednesday, April 8th, 1795, and the royal bridegroom was drunk.

So soon as they were separated, George became implected with a morbid
hatred for his wife, which was hardly in accord with his light and
variant nature and shows how bitterly he had been mortified by his
marriage of necessity. It is sad that so much of his life should have
been wasted in futile strainings after divorce. Yet we can scarcely
blame him for seizing upon every scrap of scandal that was whispered of
his wife. Besides his not unnatural wish to be free, it was derogatory
to the dignity of a prince and a regent that his wife should be living
an eccentric life at Blackheath with a family of singers named Sapio.
Indeed, Caroline's conduct during this time was as indiscreet as ever.
Wherever she went she made ribald jokes about her husband, 'in such a
voice that all, by-standing, might hear.' 'After dinner,' writes one of
her servants, 'Her Royal Highness made a wax figure as usual, and gave
it an amiable pair of large horns; then took three pins out of her
garment and stuck them through and through, and put the figure to roast
and melt at the fire. What a silly piece of spite! Yet it is impossible
not to laugh when one sees it done.' Imagine the feelings of the
First Gentleman in Europe when the unseemly story of these pranks was
whispered to him!

For my own part, I fancy Caroline was innocent of any infidelity to her
unhappy husband. But that is neither here nor there. Her behaviour was
certainly not above suspicion. It fully justified George in trying to
establish a case for her divorce. When, at length, she went abroad, her
vagaries were such that the whole of her English suite left her, and we
hear of her travelling about the Holy Land attended by another family,
named Bergami. When her husband succeeded to the throne, and her name
was struck out of the liturgy, she despatched expostulations in absurd
English to Lord Liverpool. Receiving no answer, she decided to return
and claim her right to be crowned Queen of England. Whatever the unhappy
lady did, she always was ridiculous. One cannot but smile as one reads
of her posting along the French roads in a yellow travelling-chariot
drawn by cart-horses, with a retinue that included an alderman, a
reclaimed lady-in-waiting, an Italian count, the eldest son of the
alderman, and 'a fine little female child, about three years old, whom
Her Majesty, in conformity with her benevolent practices on former
occasions, had adopted.' The breakdown of her impeachment, and her
acceptance of an income formed a fitting anti-climax to the terrible
absurdities of her position. She died from the effects of a chill caught
when she was trying vainly to force a way to her husband's coronation.
Unhappy woman! Our sympathy for her is not misgiven. Fate wrote her a
most tremendous tragedy, and she played it in tights. Let us pity her,
but not forget to pity her husband, the King, also.

It is another common accusation against George that he was an undutiful
and unfeeling son. If this was so, it is certain that not all the blame
is to be laid upon him alone. There is more than one anecdote which
shows that King George disliked his eldest son, and took no trouble to
conceal his dislike, long before the boy had been freed from his tutors.
It was the coldness of his father and the petty restrictions he loved to
enforce that first drove George to seek the companionship of such men as
Egalité and the Duke of Cumberland, both of whom were quick to inflame
his impressionable mind to angry resentment. Yet, when Margaret
Nicholson attempted the life of the King, the Prince immediately posted
off from Brighton that he might wait upon his father at Windsor--a
graceful act of piety that was rewarded by his father's refusal to see
him. Hated by the Queen, who at this time did all she could to keep her
husband and his son apart, surrounded by intriguers, who did all they
could to set him against his father, George seems to have behaved with
great discretion. In the years that follow, I can conceive no position
more difficult than that in which he found himself every time his father
relapsed into lunacy. That he should have by every means opposed those
who through jealousy stood between him and the regency was only natural.
It cannot be said that at any time did he show anxiety to rule, so
long as there was any immediate chance of the King's recovery. On the
contrary, all impartial seers of that chaotic Court agreed that the
Prince bore himself throughout the intrigues, wherein he himself was
bound to be, in a notably filial way.

There are many things that I regret in the career of George IV., and
what I most of all regret is the part that he played in the politics of
the period. Englishmen to-day have at length decided that Royalty shall
not set foot in the political arena. I do not despair that some day we
shall place politics upon a sound commercial basis, as they have already
done in America and France, or leave them entirely in the hands of the
police, as they do in Russia. It is horrible to think that, under our
existing régime, all the men of noblest blood and highest intellect
should waste their time in the sordid atmosphere of the House of
Commons, listening for hours to nonentities talking nonsense, or
searching enormous volumes to prove that somebody said something some
years ago that does not quite tally with something he said the other
day, or standing tremulous before the whips in the lobbies and the
scorpions in the constituencies. In the political machine are crushed
and lost all our best men. That Mr. Gladstone did not choose to be a
cardinal is a blow under which the Roman Catholic Church still staggers.
In Mr. Chamberlain Scotland Yard missed its smartest detective. What a
fine voluptuary might Lord Rosebery have been! It is a platitude that
the country is ruled best by the permanent officials, and I look forward
to the time when Mr. Keir Hardie shall hang his cap in the hall of
No. 10 Downing Street, and a Conservative working man shall lead Her
Majesty's Opposition. In the lifetime of George, politics were not a
whit finer than they are to-day. I feel a genuine indignation that he
should have wasted so much of tissue in mean intrigues about ministries
and bills. That he should have been fascinated by that splendid fellow,
Fox, is quite right. That he should have thrown himself with all his
heart into the storm of the Westminster election is most natural. But it
is awful inverideed to find him, long after he had reached man's estate,
indulging in back-stair intrigues with Whigs and Tories. It is, of
course, absurd to charge him with deserting his first friends, the
Whigs. His love and fidelity were given, not to the Whigs, but to the
men who led them. Even after the death of Fox, he did, in misplaced
piety, do all he could for Fox's party. What wonder that, when he found
he was ignored by the Ministry that owed its existence to him, he turned
his back upon that sombre couple, the 'Lords G. and G.,' whom he had
always hated, and went over to the Tories? Among the Tories he hoped to
find men who would faithfully perform their duties and leave him leisure
to live his own beautiful life. I regret immensely that his part in
politics did not cease here. The state of the country and of his own
finances, and also, I fear, a certain love that he had imbibed for
political manipulation, prevented him from standing aside. How useless
was all the finesse he displayed in the long-drawn question of Catholic
Emancipation! How lamentable his terror of Lord Wellesley's rude
dragooning! And is there not something pitiable in the thought of the
Regent at a time of ministerial complications lying prone on his bed
with a sprained ankle, and taking, as was whispered, in one day as many
as seven hundred drops of laudanum? Some said he took these doses to
deaden the pain. But others, and among them his brother Cumberland,
declared that the sprain was all a sham. I hope it was. The thought of
a voluptuary in pain is very terrible. In any case, I cannot but feel
angry, for George's own sake and that of his kingdom, that he found
it impossible to keep further aloof from the wearisome troubles of
political life. His wretched indecision of character made him an easy
prey to unscrupulous ministers, while his extraordinary diplomatic
powers and almost extravagant tact made them, in their turn, an easy
prey to him. In these two processes much of his genius was spent
untimely. I must confess that he did not quite realise where his duties
ended. He wished always to do too much. If you read his repeated appeals
to his father that he might be permitted to serve actively in the
British army against the French, you will acknowledge that it was
through no fault of his own that he did not fight. It touches me to
think that in his declining years he actually thought that he had led
one of the charges at Waterloo. He would often describe the whole scene
as it appeared to him at that supreme moment, and refer to the Duke of
Wellington, saying, 'Was it not so, Duke?' 'I have often heard you say
so, your Majesty,' the old soldier would reply, grimly. I am not sure
that the old soldier was at Waterloo himself. In a room full of
people he once referred to the battle as having been won upon the
playing-fields of Eton. This was certainly a most unfortunate slip,
seeing that all historians are agreed that it was fought on a certain
field situate a few miles from Brussels.

In one of his letters to the King, craving for a military appointment,
George urges that, whilst his next brother, the Duke of York, commanded
the army, and the younger branches of the family were either generals
or lieutenant-generals, he, who was Prince of Wales, remained colonel of
dragoons. And herein, could he have known it, lay the right limitation
of his life. As Royalty was and is constituted, it is for the younger
sons to take an active part in the services, whilst the eldest son is
left as the ruler of Society. Thousands and thousands of guineas were
given by the nation that the Prince of Wales, the Regent, the King,
might be, in the best sense of the word, ornamental. It is not for
us, at this moment, to consider whether Royalty, as a wholly Pagan
institution, is not out of place in a community of Christians. It is
enough that we should inquire whether the god, whom our grand-fathers
set up and worshipped and crowned with offerings, gave grace to his
worshippers.

That George was a moral man, in our modern sense, I do not for one
moment pretend. It were idle to deny that he was profligate. When he
died there were found in one of his cabinets more than a hundred locks
of women's hair. Some of these were still plastered with powder and
pomatum, some were mere little golden curls, such as grow low down
upon a girl's neck, others were streaked with grey. The whole of this
collection subsequently passed into the hands of Adam, the famous Scotch
henchman of the Regent. In his family, now resident in Glasgow, it is
treasured as an heirloom. I myself have been privileged to look at all
these locks of hair, and I have seen a clairvoyante take them one by
one, and, pinching them between her lithe fingers, tell of the love
that each symbolised. I have heard her tell of long rides by night, of a
boudoir hung with grass-green satin, and of a tryst at Windsor; of one,
the wife of a hussar at York, whose little lap-dog used to bark angrily
whenever the Regent came near his mistress; of a milkmaid who, in her
great simpleness, thought her child would one day be King of England;
of an arch-duchess with blue eyes, and a silly little flautist from
Portugal; of women that were wantons and fought for his favour, great
ladies that he loved dearly, girls that gave themselves to him humbly.
If we lay all pleasures at the feet of our Prince, we can scarcely hope
he will remain virtuous. Indeed, we do not wish our Prince to be an
examplar of godliness, but a perfect type of happiness. It may be
foolish of us to insist upon apolaustic happiness, but that is the kind
of happiness that we can ourselves, most of us, best understand, and so
we offer it to our ideal. In Royalty we find our Bacchus, our Venus.

Certainly George was, in the practical sense of the word, a fine king.
His wonderful physique, his wealth, his brilliant talents, he gave them
all without stint to Society. From the time when, at Madame Cornelys',
he gallivanted with rips and demireps, to the time when he sat, a stout
and solitary old king, fishing in the artificial pond at Windsor,
his life was beautifully ordered. He indulged to the full in all the
delights that England could offer him. That he should have, in his old
age, suddenly abandoned his career of vigorous enjoyment is, I confess,
rather surprising. The Royal voluptuary generally remains young to the
last. No one ever tires of pleasure. It is the pursuit of pleasure,
the trouble to grasp it, that makes us old. Only the soldiers who enter
Capua with wounded feet leave it demoralised. And yet George, who never
had to wait or fight for a pleasure, fell enervate long before his
death. I can but attribute this to the constant persecution to which he
was subjected by duns and ministers, parents and wives.

Not that I regret the manner in which he spent his last years. On the
contrary, I think it was exceedingly cosy. I like to think of the King,
at Windsor, lying a-bed all the morning in his darkened room, with all
the sporting papers scattered over his quilt and a little decanter of
the favourite cherry-brandy within easy reach. I like to think of him
sitting by his fire in the afternoon and hearing his ministers ask for
him at the door and piling another log upon the fire, as he heard them
sent away by his servant. It was not, I acknowledge, a life to kindle
popular enthusiasm. But most people knew little of its mode. For all
they knew, His Majesty might have been making his soul or writing
his memoirs. In reality, George was now 'too fat by far' to brook the
observation of casual eyes. Especially he hated to be seen by those
whose memories might bear them back to the time when he had yet a waist.
Among his elaborate precautions of privacy was a pair of avant-couriers,
who always preceded his pony-chaise in its daily progress through
Windsor Great Park and had strict commands to drive back any intruder.
In The Veiled Majestic Man, Where is the Graceful Despot of England?
and other lampoons not extant, the scribblers mocked his loneliness. At
White's, one evening, four gentlemen of high fashion vowed, over their
wine, they would see the invisible monarch. So they rode down next day
to Windsor, and secreted themselves in the branches of a holm-oak. Here
they waited perdus, beguiling the hours and the frost with their flasks.
When dusk was falling, they heard at last the chime of hoofs on the
hard road, and saw presently a splash of the Royal livery, as two grooms
trotted by, peering warily from side to side, and disappeared in the
gloom. The conspirators in the tree held their breath, till they caught
the distant sound of wheels. Nearer and louder came the sound, and
soon they saw a white, postillioned pony, a chaise and, yes, girth
immensurate among the cushions, a weary monarch, whose face, crimson
above the dark accumulation of his stock, was like some ominous
sunset.... He had passed them and they had seen him, monstrous and
moribund among the cushions. He had been borne past them like a wounded
Bacchanal. The King! The Regent!... They shuddered in the frosty
branches. The night was gathering and they climbed silently to the
ground, with an awful, indispellible image before their eyes.

You see, these gentlemen were not philosophers. Remember, also, that
the strangeness of their escapade, the cramped attitude they had been
compelled to maintain in the branches of the holm-oak, the intense
cold and their frequent resort to the flask must have all conspired to
exaggerate their emotions and prevent them from looking at things in a
rational way. After all, George had lived his life. He had lived more
fully than any other man. And it was better really that his death should
be preceded by decline. For every one, obviously, the most desirable
kind of death is that which strikes men down, suddenly, in their prime.
Had they not been so dangerous, railways would never have ousted the
old coaches from popular favour. But, however keenly we may court such
a death for ourselves or for those who are near and dear to us, we
must always be offended whenever it befall one in whom our interest is
aesthetic merely. Had his father permitted George to fight at Waterloo,
and had some fatal bullet pierced the padding of that splendid breast,
I should have been really annoyed, and this essay would never have
been written. Sudden death mars the unity of an admirable life. Natural
decline, tapering to tranquillity, is its proper end. As a man's life
begins, faintly, and gives no token of childhood's intensity and the
expansion of youth and the perfection of manhood, so it should also end,
faintly. The King died a death that was like the calm conclusion of a
great, lurid poem. Quievit.

Yes, his life was a poem, a poem in the praise of Pleasure. And it is
right that we should think of him always as the great voluptuary. Only
let us note that his nature never became, as do the natures of most
voluptuaries, corroded by a cruel indifference to the happiness of
others. When all the town was agog for the fête to be given by the
Regent in honour of the French King, Sheridan sent a forged card of
invitation to Romeo Coates, the half-witted dandy, who used at this time
to walk about in absurd ribbons and buckles, and was the butt of all the
streetsters. The poor fellow arrived at the entrance of Carlton House,
proud as a peacock, and he was greeted with a tremendous cheer from the
bystanding mob, but when he came to the lackeys he was told that his
card was a hoax and sent about his business. The tears were rolling down
his cheeks as he shambled back into the street. The Regent heard
later in the evening of this sorry joke, and next day despatched a
kindly-worded message, in which he prayed that Mr. Coates would not
refuse to come and 'view the decorations, nevertheless.' Though he does
not appear to have treated his inferiors with the extreme servility that
is now in vogue, George was beloved by the whole of his household, and
many are the little tales that are told to illustrate the kindliness
and consideration he showed to his valets and his jockeys and his
stable-boys. That from time to time he dropped certain of his favourites
is no cause for blaming him. Remember that a Great Personage, like a
great genius, is dangerous to his fellow-creatures. The favourites of
Royalty live in an intoxicant atmosphere. They become unaccountable for
their behaviour. Either they get beyond themselves, and, like Brummell,
forget that the King, their friend, is also their master, or they outrun
the constable and go bankrupt, or cheat at cards in order to keep up
their position, or do some other foolish thing that makes it impossible
for the King to favour them more. Old friends are generally the refuge
of unsociable persons. Remembering this also, gauge the temptation that
besets the very leader of Society to form fresh friendships, when all
the cleverest and most charming persons in the land are standing ready,
like supers at the wings, to come on and please him! At Carlton House
there was a constant succession of wits. Minds were preserved for
the Prince of Wales, as coverts are preserved for him to-day. For him
Sheridan would flash his best bon-mot, and Theodore Hook play his most
practical joke, his swiftest chansonette. And Fox would talk, as only he
could, of Liberty and of Patriotism, and Byron would look more than ever
like Isidore de Lara as he recited his own bad verses, and Sir Walter
Scott would 'pour out with an endless generosity his store of old-world
learning, kindness, and humour.' Of such men George was a splendid
patron. He did not merely sit in his chair, gaping princely at their
wit and their wisdom, but quoted with the scholars and argued with
the statesmen and jested with the wits. Doctor Burney, an impartial
observer, says that he was amazed by the knowledge of music that the
Regent displayed in a half-hour's discussion over the wine. Croker says
that 'the Prince and Scott were the two most brilliant story-tellers,
in their several ways, he had ever happened to meet. Both exerted
themselves, and it was hard to say which shone the most.' Indeed His
Royal Highness appears to have been a fine conversationalist, with a
wide range of knowledge and great humour. We, who have come at length to
look upon stupidity as one of the most sacred prerogatives of Royalty,
can scarcely realise that, if George's birth had been never so humble, he
would have been known to us as a most admirable scholar and wit, or as
a connoisseur of the arts. It is pleasing to think of his love for the
Flemish school of painting, for Wilkie and Sir Thomas Lawrence. The
splendid portraits of foreign potentates that hang in the Banqueting
Room at Windsor bear witness to his sense of the canvas. In his later
years he exerted himself strenuously in raising the tone of the drama.
His love of the classics never left him. We know he was fond of quoting
those incomparable poets, Homer, at great length, and that he was
prominent in the 'papyrus-craze.' Indeed, he inspired Society with
a love of something more than mere pleasure, a love of the 'humaner
delights.' He was a giver of tone. At his coming, the bluff, disgusting
ways of the Tom and Jerry period gave way to those florid graces that
are still called Georgian.

A pity that George's predecessor was not a man, like the Prince Consort,
of strong chastening influence! Then might the bright flamboyance which
he gave to Society have made his reign more beautiful than any other--a
real renaissance. But he found London a wild city of taverns and
cock-pits, and the grace which in the course of years he gave to his
subjects never really entered into them. The cock-pits were gilded and
the taverns painted with colour, but the heart of the city was vulgar,
even as before. The simulation of higher things did indeed give the note
of a very interesting period, but how shallow that simulation was and
how merely it was due to George's own influence, we may see in the light
of what happened after his death. The good that he had done died with
him. The refinement he had laid upon vulgarity fell away, like enamel
from withered cheeks. It was only George himself who had made the sham
endure. The Victorian era came soon, and the angels rushed in and drove
the nymphs away and hung the land with reps.

I have often wondered whether it was with a feeling that his influence
would be no more than life-long, that George allowed Carlton House, that
dear structure, the very work of his life and symbol of his being, to
be rased. I wish that Carlton House were still standing. I wish we
could still walk through those corridors, whose walls were 'crusted with
ormolu,' and parquet-floors were 'so glossy that, were Narcissus to come
down from heaven, he would, I maintain, need no other mirror for his
beauté.' I wish that we could see the pier-glasses and the girandoles
and the twisted sofas, the fauns foisted upon the ceiling and the rident
goddesses along the wall. These things would make George's memory dearer
to us, help us to a fuller knowledge of him. I am glad that the Pavilion
still stands here in Brighton. Its trite lawns and wanton cupolae have
taught me much. As I write this essay, I can see them from my window.
Last night, in a crowd of trippers and townspeople, I roamed the lawns
of that dishonoured palace, whilst a band played us tunes. Once I
fancied I saw the shade of a swaying figure and of a wine-red face.

Brighton, 1894.




The Pervasion of Rouge

Nay, but it is useless to protest. Artifice must queen it once more in
the town, and so, if there be any whose hearts chafe at her return, let
them not say, 'We have come into evil times,' and be all for resistance,
reformation, or angry cavilling. For did the king's sceptre send the sea
retrograde, or the wand of the sorcerer avail to turn the sun from
its old course? And what man or what number of men ever stayed that
inexorable process by which the cities of this world grow, are very
strong, fail, and grow again? Indeed, indeed, there is charm in every
period, and only fools and flutterpates do not seek reverently for what
is charming in their own day. No martyrdom, however fine, nor satire,
however splendidly bitter, has changed by a little tittle the known
tendency of things. It is the times that can perfect us, not we the
times, and so let all of us wisely acquiesce. Like the little wired
marionettes, let us acquiesce in the dance.

For behold! The Victorian era comes to its end and the day of sancta
simplicitas is quite ended. The old signs are here and the portents to
warn the seer of life that we are ripe for a new epoch of artifice. Are
not men rattling the dice-box and ladies dipping their fingers in the
rouge-pot? At Rome, in the keenest time of her degringolade, when there
was gambling even in the holy temples, great ladies (does not Lucian
tell us?) did not scruple to squander all they had upon unguents from
Arabia. Nero's mistress and unhappy wife, Poppaea, of shameful
memory, had in her travelling retinue fifteen--or, as some say,
fifty--she-asses, for the sake of their milk, that was thought an
incomparable guard against cosmetics with poison in them. Last century,
too, when life was lived by candle-light, and ethics was but etiquette,
and even art a question of punctilio, women, we know, gave the best
hours of the day to the crafty farding of their faces and the towering
of their coiffures. And men, throwing passion into the wine-bowl to sink
or swim, turned out thought to browse upon the green cloth. Cannot we
even now in our fancy see them, those silent exquisites round the long
table at Brooks's, masked, all of them, 'lest the countenance should
betray feeling,' in quinze masks, through whose eyelets they sat
peeping, peeping, while macao brought them riches or ruin! We can see
them, those silent rascals, sitting there with their cards and their
rouleaux and their wooden money-bowls, long after the dawn had crept
up St. James's and pressed its haggard face against the window of the
little club. Yes, we can raise their ghosts--and, more, we can see
many where a devotion to hazard fully as meek as theirs. In England there
has been a wonderful revival of cards. Baccarat may rival dead faro in
the tale of her devotees. We have all seen the sweet English chatelaine
at her roulette wheel, and ere long it may be that tender parents will
be writing to complain of the compulsory baccarat in our public schools.

In fact, we are all gamblers once more, but our gambling is on a finer
scale than ever it was. We fly from the card-room to the heath, and
from the heath to the City, and from the City to the coast of the
Mediterranean. And just as no one seriously encourages the clergy in its
frantic efforts to lay the spirit of chance that has thus resurged among
us, so no longer are many faces set against that other great sign of a
more complicated life, the love for cosmetics. No longer is a lady of
fashion blamed if, to escape the outrageous persecution of time, she
fly for sanctuary to the toilet-table; and if a damosel, prying in her
mirror, be sure that with brush and pigment she can trick herself into
more charm, we are not angry. Indeed, why should we ever have been?
Surely it is laudable, this wish to make fair the ugly and overtop
fairness, and no wonder that within the last five years the trade of the
makers of cosmetics has increased immoderately--twentyfold, so one of
these makers has said to me. We need but walk down any modish street
and peer into the little broughams that flit past, or (in Thackeray's
phrase) under the bonnet of any woman we meet, to see over how wide a
kingdom rouge reigns.

And now that the use of pigments is becoming general, and most women
are not so young as they are painted, it may be asked curiously how the
prejudice ever came into being. Indeed, it is hard to trace folly, for
that it is inconsequent, to its start; and perhaps it savours too
much of reason to suggest that the prejudice was due to the tristful
confusion man has made of soul and surface. Through trusting so keenly
to the detection of the one by keeping watch upon the other, and by
force of the thousand errors following, he has come to think of surface
even as the reverse of soul. He seems to suppose that every clown
beneath his paint and lip-salve is moribund and knows it (though in
verity, I am told, clowns are as cheerful a class of men as any other),
that the fairer the fruit's rind and the more delectable its bloom,
the closer are packed the ashes within it. The very jargon of the
hunting-field connects cunning with a mask. And so perhaps came man's
anger at the embellishment of women--that lovely mask of enamel with its
shadows of pink and tiny pencilled veins, what must lurk behind it?
Of what treacherous mysteries may it not be the screen? Does not the
heathen lacquer her dark face, and the harlot paint her cheeks, because
sorrow has made them pale?

After all, the old prejudice is a-dying. We need not pry into the secret
of its birth. Rather is this a time of jolliness and glad indulgence.
For the era of rouge is upon us, and as only in an elaborate era can
man, by the tangled accrescency of his own pleasures and emotions, reach
that refinement which is his highest excellence, and by making himself,
so to say, independent of Nature, come nearest to God, so only in an
elaborate era is woman perfect. Artifice is the strength of the world,
and in that same mask of paint and powder, shadowed with vermeil tinct
and most trimly pencilled, is woman's strength.

For see! We need not look so far back to see woman under the direct
influence of Nature. Early in this century, our grandmothers, sickening
of the odour of faded exotics and spilt wine, came out into the daylight
once more and let the breezes blow around their faces and enter, sharp
and welcome, into their lungs. Artifice they drove forth and they set
Martin Tupper upon a throne of mahogany to rule over them. A very reign
of terror set in. All things were sacrificed to the fetish Nature. Old
ladies may still be heard to tell how, when they were girls, affectation
was not; and, if we verify their assertion in the light of such literary
authorities as Dickens, we find that it is absolutely true. Women appear
to have been in those days utterly natural in their conduct--flighty,
fainting, blushing, gushing, giggling, and shaking their curls. They
knew no reserve in the first days of the Victorian era. No thought was
held too trivial, no emotion too silly, to express. To Nature everything
was sacrificed. Great heavens! And in those barren days what influence
did women exert! By men they seem not to have been feared nor loved, but
regarded rather as 'dear little creatures' or 'wonderful little
beings,' and in their relation to life as foolish and ineffectual as the
landscapes they did in water-colour. Yet, if the women of those years
were of no great account, they had a certain charm, and they at least
had not begun to trespass upon men's ground; if they touched not
thought, which is theirs by right, at any rate they refrained from
action, which is ours. Far more serious was it when, in the natural
trend of time, they became enamoured of rinking and archery and
galloping along the Brighton Parade. Swiftly they have sped on since
then from horror to horror. The invasion of the tennis-courts and of the
golf-links, the seizure of the bicycle and of the typewriter, were
but steps preliminary in that campaign which is to end with the final
victorious occupation of St. Stephen's. But stay! The horrific pioneers
of womanhood who gad hither and thither and, confounding wisdom with the
device on her shield, shriek for the unbecoming, are doomed. Though they
spin their bicycle-treadles so amazingly fast, they are too late. Though
they scream victory, none follow them. Artifice, that fair exile, has
returned.

Yes, though the pioneers know it not, they are doomed already. For of
the curiosities of history not the least strange is the manner in which
two social movements may be seen to overlap, long after the second has,
in truth, given its death-blow to the first. And, in like manner, as one
has seen the limbs of a murdered thing in lively movement, so we need
not doubt that, though the voices of those who cry out for reform be
very terribly shrill, they will soon be hushed. Dear Artifice is with
us. It needed but that we should wait.

Surely, without any of my pleading, women will welcome their great and
amiable protectrix, as by instinct. For (have I not said?) it is upon
her that all their strength, their life almost, depends. Artifices first
command to them is that they should repose. With bodily activity their
powder will fly, their enamel crack. They are butterflies who must not
flit, if they love their bloom. Now, setting aside the point of view of
passion, from which very many obvious things might be said (and probably
have been by the minor poets), it is, from the intellectual point of
view, quite necessary that a woman should repose. Hers is the resupinate
sex. On her couch she is a goddess, but so soon as ever she put her foot
to the ground--ho, she is the veriest little sillypop, and quite done
for. She cannot rival us in action, but she is our mistress in the
things of the mind. Let her not by second-rate athletics, nor indeed
by any exercise soever of the limbs, spoil the pretty procedure of her
reason. Let her be content to remain the guide, the subtle suggester
of what we must do, the strategist whose soldiers we are, the little
architect whose workmen.

'After all,' as a pretty girl once said to me, 'women are a sex by
themselves, so to speak,' and the sharper the line between their worldly
functions and ours, the better. This greater swiftness and less erring
subtlety of mind, their forte and privilege, justifies the painted mask
that Artifice bids them wear. Behind it their minds can play without
let. They gain the strength of reserve. They become important, as in
the days of the Roman Empire were the Emperor's mistresses, as was the
Pompadour at Versailles, as was our Elizabeth. Yet do not their faces
become lined with thought; beautiful and without meaning are their
faces.

And, truly, of all the good things that will happen with the full
revival of cosmetics, one of the best is that surface will finally
be severed from soul. That damnable confusion will be solved by the
extinguishing of a prejudice which, as I suggest, itself created. Too
long has the face been degraded from its rank as a thing of beauty to
a mere vulgar index of character or emotion. We had come to troubling
ourselves, not with its charm of colour and line, but with such
questions as whether the lips were sensuous, the eyes full of
sadness, the nose indicative of determination. I have no quarrel with
physiognomy. For my own part I believe in it. But it has tended to
degrade the face aesthetically, in such wise as the study of cheirosophy
has tended to degrade the hand. And the use of cosmetics, the masking of
the face, will change this. We shall gaze at a woman merely because she
is beautiful, not stare into her face anxiously, as into the face of a
barometer.

How fatal it has been, in how many ways, this confusion of soul and
service! Wise were the Greeks in making plain masks for their mummers to
play in, and dunces we not to have done the same! Only the other day, an
actress was saying that what she was most proud of in her art--next, of
course, to having appeared in some provincial pantomime at the age of
three--was the deftness with which she contrived, in parts demanding a
rapid succession of emotions, to dab her cheeks quite quickly with rouge
from the palm of her right hand or powder from the palm of her left.
Gracious goodness! why do not we have masks upon the stage? Drama is the
presentment of the soul in action. The mirror of the soul is the voice.
Let the young critics, who seek a cheap reputation for austerity, by
cavilling at 'incidental music,' set their faces rather against the
attempt to justify inferior dramatic art by the subvention of a quite
alien art like painting, of any art, indeed, whose sphere is only
surface. Let those, again, who sneer, so rightly, at the 'painted
anecdotes of the Academy,' censure equally the writers who trespass on
painters' ground. It is a proclaimed sin that a painter should concern
himself with a good little girl's affection for a Scotch greyhound,
or the keen enjoyment of their port by elderly gentlemen of the early
'forties. Yet, for a painter to prod the soul with his paint-brush is
no worse than for a novelist to refuse to dip under the surface, and the
fashion of avoiding a psychological study of grief by stating that the
owner's hair turned white in a single night, or of shame by mentioning
a sudden rush of scarlet to the cheeks, is as lamentable as may be. But!
But with the universal use of cosmetics and the consequent secernment of
soul and surface, upon which, at the risk of irritating a reader, I
must again insist, all those old properties that went to bolster up the
ordinary novel--the trembling lips, the flashing eyes, the determined
curve of the chin, the nervous trick of biting the moustache, aye, and
the hectic spot of red on either cheek--will be made spiflicate, as the
puppets were spiflicated by Don Quixote. Yes, even now Demos begins to
discern. The same spirit that has revived rouge, smote his mouth as it
grinned at the wondrous painter of mist and river, and now sends him
sprawling for the pearls that Meredith dived for in the deep waters of
romance.

Indeed the revival of cosmetics must needs be so splendid an influence,
conjuring boons innumerable, that one inclines almost to mutter against
that inexorable law by which Artifice must perish from time to
time. That such branches of painting as the staining of glass or
the illuminating of manuscripts should fall into disuse seems, in
comparison, so likely; these were esoteric arts; they died with the
monastic spirit. But personal appearance is art's very basis. The
painting of the face is the first kind of painting men can have known.
To make beautiful things--is it not an impulse laid upon few? But
to make oneself beautiful is an universal instinct. Strange that the
resultant art could ever perish! So fascinating an art too! So various
in its materials from stimmis, psimythium, and fuligo to bismuth and
arsenic, so simple in that its ground and its subject-matter are one, so
marvellous in that its very subject-matter becomes lovely when an artist
has selected it! For surely this is no idle nor fantastic saying. To
deny that 'making up' is an art, on the pretext that the finished work
of its exponents depends for beauty and excellence upon the ground
chosen for the work, is absurd. At the touch of a true artist, the
plainest face turns comely. As subject-matter the face is no more than
suggestive, as ground, merely a loom round which the beatus artifex may
spin the threads of any golden fabric:

'Quae nunc nomen habent operosi signa Maronis Pondus iners quondam
duraque massa fuit. Multa viros nescire decet; pars maxima rerum
Offendat, si non interiora tegas,'

and, as Ovid would seem to suggest, by pigments any tone may be set
aglow on a woman's cheek, from enamel the features take any form.
Insomuch that surely the advocates of soup-kitchens and free-libraries
and other devices for giving people what Providence did not mean them to
receive should send out pamphlets in the praise of self-embellishment.
For it will place Beauty within easy reach of many who could not
otherwise hope to attain to it.

But of course Artifice is rather exacting. In return for the repose she
forces--so wisely!--upon her followers when the sun is high or the moon
is blown across heaven, she demands that they should pay her long
homage at the sun's rising. The initiate may not enter lightly upon her
mysteries. For, if a bad complexion be inexcusable, to be ill-painted is
unforgivable; and, when the toilet is laden once more with the fulness
of its elaboration, we shall hear no more of the proper occupation for
women. And think, how sweet an energy, to sit at the mirror of coquetry!
See the dear merits of the toilet as shown upon old vases, or upon
the walls of Roman ruins, or, rather still, read Böttiger's alluring,
scholarly description of 'Morgenscenen im Puttzimmer Einer Reichen
Römerin.' Read of Sabina's face as she comes through the curtain of her
bed-chamber to the chamber of her toilet. The slavegirls have long been
chafing their white feet upon the marble floor. They stand, those timid
Greek girls, marshalled in little battalions. Each has her appointed
task, and all kneel in welcome as Sabina stalks, ugly and frowning, to
the toilet chair. Scaphion steps forth from among them, and, dipping a
tiny sponge in a bowl of hot milk, passes it lightly, ever so lightly,
over her mistress' face. The Poppaean pastes melt beneath it like snow.
A cooling lotion is poured over her brow, and is fanned with feathers.
Phiale comes after, a clever girl, captured in some sea-skirmish on the
Aegean. In her left hand she holds the ivory box wherein are the phucus
and that white powder, psimythium; in her right a sheaf of slim brushes.
With how sure a touch does she mingle the colours, and in what sweet
proportion blushes and blanches her lady's upturned face. Phiale is the
cleverest of all the slaves. Now Calamis dips her quill in a certain
powder that floats, liquid and sable, in the hollow of her palm.
Standing upon tip-toe and with lips parted, she traces the arch of the
eyebrows. The slaves whisper loudly of their lady's beauty, and two of
them hold up a mirror to her. Yes, the eyebrows are rightly arched. But
why does Psecas abase herself? She is craving leave to powder Sabina's
hair with a fine new powder. It is made of the grated rind of the
cedar-tree, and a Gallic perfumer, whose stall is near the Circus, gave
it to her for a kiss. No lady in Rome knows of it. And so, when four
special slaves have piled up the headdress, out of a perforated box
this glistening powder is showered. Into every little brown ringlet it
enters, till Sabina's hair seems like a pile of gold coins. Lest the
breezes send it flying, the girls lay the powder with sprinkled attar.
Soon Sabina will start for the Temple of Cybele.

Ah! Such are the lures of the toilet that none will for long hold aloof
from them. Cosmetics are not going to be a mere prosaic remedy for age
or plainness, but all ladies and all young girls will come to love them.
Does not a certain blithe Marquise, whose lettres intimes from the Court
of Louis Seize are less read than their wit deserves, tell us how she
was scandalised to see 'même les toutes jeunes demoiselles émaillées
comme ma tabatièré? So it shall be with us. Surely the common prejudice
against painting the lily can but be based on mere ground of economy.
That which is already fair is complete, it may be urged--urged
implausibly, for there are not so many lovely things in this world that
we can afford not to know each one of them by heart. There is only one
white lily, and who that has ever seen--as I have--a lily really well
painted could grudge the artist so fair a ground for his skill? Scarcely
do you believe through how many nice metamorphoses a lily may be passed
by him. In like manner, we all know the young girl, with her simpleness,
her goodness, her wayward ignorance. And a very charming ideal for
England must she have been, and a very natural one, when a young girl
sat even on the throne. But no nation can keep its ideal for ever, and
it needed none of Mr. Gilbert's delicate satire in 'Utopia' to remind us
that she had passed out of our ken with the rest of the early Victorian
era. What writer of plays, as lately asked some pressman, who had been
told off to attend many first nights and knew what he was talking about,
ever dreams of making the young girl the centre of his theme? Rather he
seeks inspiration from the tried and tired woman of the world, in all
her intricate maturity, whilst, by way of comic relief, he sends the
young girl flitting in and out with a tennis-racket, the poor eidôlon
amauron of her former self. The season of the unsophisticated is gone
by, and the young girl's final extinction beneath the rising tides of
cosmetics will leave no gap in life and will rob art of nothing.

'Tush,' I can hear some damned flutterpate exclaim, 'girlishness and
innocence are as strong and as permanent as womanhood itself! Why, a few
months past, the whole town went mad over Miss Cissie Loftus! Was not
hers a success of girlish innocence and the absence of rouge? If such
things as these be outmoded, why was she so wildly popular?' Indeed,
the triumph of that clever girl, whose début made London nice even in
August, is but another witness to the truth of my contention. In a very
sophisticated time, simplicity has a new dulcedo. Hers was a success of
contrast. Accustomed to clever malaperts like Miss Lloyd or Miss Reeve,
whose experienced pouts and smiles under the sun-bonnet are a standing
burlesque of innocence and girlishness, Demos was really delighted,
for once and away, to see the real presentment of these things upon his
stage. Coming after all those sly serios, coming so young and mere with
her pink frock and straightly combed hair, Miss Cissie Loftus had the
charm which things of another period often do possess. Besides, just
as we adored her for the abrupt nod with which she was wont at first to
acknowledge the applause, so we were glad for her to come upon the stage
with nothing to tinge the ivory of her cheeks. It seemed so strange,
that neglect of convention. To be behind footlights and not rouged! Yes,
hers was a success of contrast. She was like a daisy in the window at
Solomons'. She was delightful. And yet, such is the force of convention,
that when last I saw her, playing in some burlesque at the Gaiety, her
fringe was curled and her pretty face rouged with the best of them.
And, if further need be to show the absurdity of having called
her performance 'a triumph of naturalness over the jaded spirit
of modernity,' let us reflect that the little mimic was not a real
old-fashioned girl after all. She had none of that restless naturalness
that would seem to have characterised the girl of the early Victorian
days. She had no pretty ways--no smiles nor blushes nor tremors.
Possibly Demos could not have stood a presentment of girlishness
unrestrained.

But, with her grave insouciance, Miss Cissie Loftus had much of the
reserve that is one of the factors of feminine perfection, and to most
comes only, as I have said, with artifice. Her features played very,
very slightly. And in truth, this may have been one of the reasons of
her great success. For expression is but too often the ruin of a face;
and, since we cannot, as yet, so order the circumstances of life that
women shall never be betrayed into 'an unbecoming emotion,' when the
brunette shall never have cause to blush nor La Gioconda to frown,
the safest way by far is to create, by brush and pigments, artificial
expression for every face.

And this--say you?--will make monotony? You are mistaken, tots caelo
mistaken. When your mistress has wearied you with one expression, then
it will need but a few touches of that pencil, a backward sweep of that
brush, and ho, you will be revelling in another. For though, of course,
the painting of the face is, in manner, most like the painting of
canvas, in outcome it is rather akin to the art of music--lasting, like
music's echo, not for very long. So that, no doubt, of the many little
appurtenances of the Reformed Toilet Table, not the least vital will
be a list of the emotions that become its owner, with recipes for
simulating them. According to the colour she wills her hair to be for
the time--black or yellow or, peradventure, burnished red--she will
blush for you, sneer for you, laugh or languish for you. The good
combinations of line and colour are nearly numberless, and by their
means poor restless woman will be able to realise her moods in all their
shades and lights and dappledoms, to live many lives and masquerade
through many moments of joy. No monotony will be. And for us men
matrimony will have lost its sting.

But that in the world of women they will not neglect this art, so
ripping in itself, in its result so wonderfully beneficent, I am sure
indeed. Much, I have said, is already done for its full revival. The
spirit of the age has made straight the path of its professors. Fashion
has made Jezebel surrender her monopoly of the rouge-pot. As yet, the
great art of self-embellishment is for us but in its infancy. But if
Englishwomen can bring it to the flower of an excellence so supreme as
never yet has it known, then, though Old England lose her martial and
commercial supremacy, we patriots will have the satisfaction of knowing
that she has been advanced at one bound to a place in the councils
of aesthetic Europe. And, in sooth, is this hoping too high of my
countrywomen? True that, as the art seems always to have appealed to the
ladies of Athens, and it was not until the waning time of the Republic
that Roman ladies learned to love the practice of it, so Paris, Athenian
in this as in all other things, has been noted hitherto as a far more
vivid centre of the art than London. But it was in Rome, under the
Emperors, that unguentaria reached its zenith, and shall it not be in
London, soon, that unguentaria shall outstrip its Roman perfection!
Surely there must be among us artists as cunning in the use of brush
and puff as any who lived at Versailles. Surely the splendid, impalpable
advance of good taste, as shown in dress and in the decoration of
houses, may justify my hope of the preëminence of Englishwomen in the
cosmetic art. By their innate delicacy of touch they will accomplish
much, and much, of course, by their swift feminine perception. Yet it
were well that they should know something also of the theoretical side
of the craft. Modern authorities upon the mysteries of the toilet are,
it is true, rather few; but among the ancients many a writer would seem
to have been fascinated by them. Archigenes, a man of science at the
Court of Cleopatra, and Criton at the Court of the Emperor Trajan, both
wrote treatises upon cosmetics--doubtless most scholarly treatises that
would have given many a precious hint. It is a pity they are not extant.
From Lucian or from Juvenal, with his bitter picture of a Roman levée,
much may be learnt; from the staid pages of Xenophon and Aristophanes'
dear farces. But best of all is that fine book of the Ars Amatoria that
Ovid has set aside for the consideration of dyes, perfumes, and
pomades. Written by an artist who knew the allurement of the toilet and
understood its philosophy, it remains without rival as a treatise upon
Artifice. It is more than a poem, it is a manual; and if there be left
in England any lady who cannot read Latin in the original, she will do
well to procure a discreet translation. In the Bodleian Library there
is treasured the only known copy of a very poignant and delightful
rendering of this one book of Ovid's masterpiece. It was made by a
certain Wye Waltonstall, who lived in the days of Elizabeth, and, seeing
that he dedicated it to 'the Vertuous Ladyes and Gentlewomen of Great
Britain,' I am sure that the gallant writer, could he know of our great
renaissance of cosmetics, would wish his little work to be placed once
more within their reach. 'Inasmuch as to you, ladyes and gentlewomen,'
so he writes in his queer little dedication, 'my booke of pigments doth
first addresse itself, that it may kisse your hands and afterward have
the lines thereof in reading sweetened by the odour of your breath,
while the dead letters formed into words by your divided lips may
receive new life by your passionate expression, and the words marryed
in that Ruby coloured temple may thus happily united, multiply your
contentment.' It is rather sad to think that, at this crisis in the
history of pigments, the Vertuous Ladyes and Gentlewomen cannot read the
libellus of Wye Waltonstall, who did so dearly love pigments.

But since the days when these great critics wrote their treatises, with
what gifts innumerable has Artifice been loaded by Science! Many little
partitions must be added to the narthecium before it can comprehend all
the new cosmetics that have been quietly devised since classical
days, and will make the modern toilet chalks away more splendid in its
possibilities. A pity that no one has devoted himself to the compiling
of a new list; but doubtless all the newest devices are known to the
admirable unguentarians of Bond Street, who will impart them to their
clients. Our thanks, too, should be given to Science for ridding us of
the old danger that was latent in the use of cosmetics. Nowadays they
cannot, being purged of any poisonous element, do harm to the skin
that they make beautiful. There need be no more sowing the seeds of
destruction in the furrows of time, no martyrs to the cause like Maria,
Countess of Coventry, that fair dame but infelix, who died, so they
relate, from the effect of a poisonous rouge upon her lips. No, we need
have no fears now. Artifice will claim not another victim from among her
worshippers.

Loveliness shall sit at the toilet, watching her oval face in the oval
mirror. Her smooth fingers shall flit among the paints and powder, to
tip and mingle them, catch up a pencil, clasp a phial, and what not
and what not, until the mask of vermeil tinct has been laid aptly, the
enamel quite hardened. And, heavens, how she will charm us and ensorcel
our eyes! Positively rouge will rob us for a time of all our reason;
we shall go mad over masks. Was it not at Capua that they had a whole
street where nothing was sold but dyes and unguents? We must have such
a street, and, to fill our new Seplasia, our Arcade of the Unguents, all
herbs and minerals and live creatures shall give of their substance.
The white cliffs of Albion shall be ground to powder for Loveliness, and
perfumed by the ghost of many a little violet. The fluffy eider-ducks,
that are swimming round the pond, shall lose their feathers, that the
powder-puff may be moonlike as it passes over Loveliness' lovely face.
Even the camels shall become ministers of delight, giving many tufts
of their hair to be stained in her splendid colour-box, and across her
cheek the swift hares foot shall fly as of old. The sea shall offer her
the phucus, its scarlet weed. We shall spill the blood of mulberries
at her bidding. And, as in another period of great ecstasy, a dancing
wanton, la belle Aubrey, was crowned upon a church's lighted altar,
so Arsenic, that 'greentress'd goddess,' ashamed at length of skulking
between the soup of the unpopular and the test-tubes of the Queen's
analyst, shall be exalted to a place of consummate honour upon the
toilet-table of Loveliness.

All these things shall come to pass. Times of jolliness and glad
indulgence! For Artifice, whom we drove forth, has returned among us,
and, though her eyes are red with crying, she is smiling forgiveness.
She is kind. Let us dance and be glad, and trip the cockawhoop!
Artifice, sweetest exile, is come into her kingdom. Let us dance her a
welcome!

Oxford, 1894.




Poor Romeo!

Even now Bath glories in his legend, not idly, for he was the most
fantastic animal that ever stepped upon her pavement. Were ever a statue
given him (and indeed he is worthy of a grotesque in marble), it would
be put in Pulteney Street or the Circus. I know that the palm trees of
Antigua overshadowed his cradle, that there must be even now in Boulogne
many who set eyes on him in the time of his less fatuous declension,
that he died in London. But Mr. Coates (for of that Romeo I write) must
be claimed by none of these places. Bath saw the laughable disaster of
his début, and so, in a manner, his whole life seems to belong to her,
and the story of it to be a part of her annals.

The Antiguan was already on the brink of middle-age when he first trod
the English shore. But, for all his thirty-seven years, he had the heart
of a youth, and his purse being yet as heavy as his heart was light,
the English sun seemed to shine gloriously about his path and gild the
letters of introduction that he scattered everywhere. Also, he was a
gentleman of amiable, nearly elegant mien, and something of a scholar.
His father had been the most respectable resident Antigua could show,
so that little Robert, the future Romeo, had often sat at dessert with
distinguished travellers through the Indies. But in the year 1807 old
Mr. Coates had died. As we may read in vol. lxxviii. of The Gentleman's
Magazine, 'the Almighty, whom he alone feared, was pleased to take him
from this life, after having sustained an untarnished reputation for
seventy-three years,' a passage which, though objectionable in its
theology, gives the true story of Romeo's antecedents and disposes of
the later calumnies that declared him the son of a tailor. Realising
that he was now an orphan, an orphan with not a few grey hairs, our hero
had set sail in quest of amusing adventure.

For three months he took the waters of Bath, unobtrusively, like other
well-bred visitors. His attendance was solicited for all the most
fashionable routs, and at assemblies he sat always in the shade of some
titled turban. In fact, Mr. Coates was a great success. There was an air
of most romantic mystery that endeared his presence to all the damsels
fluttering fans in the Pump Room. It set them vying for his conduct
through the mazes of the Quadrille or of the Triumph, and blushing at
the sound of his name. Alas! their tremulous rivalry lasted not long.
Soon they saw that Emma, sole daughter of Sir James Tylney Long, that
wealthy baronet, had cast a magic net about the warm Antiguan heart. In
the wake of her chair, by night and day, Mr. Coates was obsequious. When
she cried that she would not drink the water without some delicacy
to banish the iron taste, it was he who stood by with a box of
vanilla-rusks. When he shaved his great moustachio, it was at her
caprice. And his devotion to Miss Emma was the more noted for that
his own considerable riches were proof that it was true and single. He
himself warned her, in some verses written for him by Euphemia Boswell,
against the crew of penniless admirers who surrounded her:

'Lady, ah! too bewitching lady! now beware Of artful men that fain would
thee ensnare Not for thy merit, but thy fortunes sake. Give me your
hand--your cash let venals take.'

Miss Emma was his first love. To understand his subsequent behaviour,
let us remember that Cupid's shaft pierces most poignantly the breast
of middle-age. Not that Mr. Coates was laughed at in Bath for a
love-a-lack-a-daisy. On the contrary, his mien, his manner, were as yet
so studiously correct, his speech so reticent, that laughter had been
unusually inept. The only strange taste evinced by him was his devotion
to theatricals. He would hold forth, by the hour, upon the fine
conception of such parts as Macbeth, Othello and, especially, Romeo.
Many ladies and gentlemen were privileged to hear him recite, in this
or that drawing-room, after supper. All testified to the real fire with
which he inflamed the lines of love or hatred. His voice, his gesture,
his scholarship, were all approved. A fine symphony of praise assured
Mr. Coates that no suitor worthier than he had ever courted Thespis.
The lust for the footlights' glare grew lurid in his mothish eye. What,
after all, were these poor triumphs of the parlour? It might be that
contemptuous Emma, hearing the loud salvos of the gallery and boxes,
would call him at length her lord.

At this time there arrived at the York House Mr. Pryse Gordon, whose
memoirs we know. Mr. Coates himself was staying at number ** Gay Street,
but was in the habit of breakfasting daily at the York House, where
he attracted Mr. Gordon's attention by 'rehearsing passages from
Shakespeare, with a tone and gesture extremely striking both to the eye
and the ear.' Mr. Gordon warmly complimented him and suggested that he
should give a public exposition of his art. The cheeks of the amateur
flushed with pleasure. 'I am ready and willing,' he replied, 'to play
Romeö to a Bath audience, if the manager will get up the play and give
me a good "Juliet"; my costume is superb and adorned with diamonds, but
I have not the advantage of knowing the manager, Dimonds.' Pleased by
the stranger's ready wit, Mr. Gordon scribbled a note of introduction to
Dimonds there and then. So soon as he had 'discussed a brace of muffins
and so many eggs,' the new Romeo started for the playhouse, and that
very day bills were posted to the effect that 'a Gentleman of Fashion
would make his first appearance on February 9 in a rôle of Shakespeare.'
All the lower boxes were immediately secured by Lady Belmore and other
lights of Bath. 'Butlers and Abigails,' it is said, 'were commanded by
their mistresses to take their stand in the centre of the pit and give
Mr. Coates a capital, hearty clapping.' Indeed, throughout the week that
elapsed before the première, no pains were spared in assuring a great
success. Miss Tylney Long showed some interest in the arrangements.
Gossip spoke of her as a likely bride.

The night came. Fashion, Virtue, and Intellect thronged the house.
Nothing could have been more cordial than the temper of the gallery.
All were eager to applaud the new Romeo. Presently, when the varlets of
Verona had brawled, there stepped into the square--what!--a mountebank,
a monstrosity. Hurrah died upon every lip. The house was thunderstruck.
Whose legs were in those scarlet pantaloons? Whose face grinned over
that bolster-cravat, and under that Charles II. wig and opera-hat? From
whose shoulders hung that spangled sky-blue cloak? Was this bedizened
scarecrow the Amateur of Fashion, for sight of whom they had paid their
shillings? At length a voice from the gallery cried, 'Good evening, Mr.
Coates,' and, as the Antiguan--for he it was--bowed low, the theatre was
filled with yells of merriment. Only the people in the boxes were still
silent, staring coldly at the protégé who had played them so odious a
prank. Lady Belmore rose and called for her chariot. Her example was
followed by several ladies of rank. The rest sat spellbound, and of
their number was Miss Tylney Long, at whose rigid face many glasses
were, of course, directed. Meanwhile the play proceeded. Those lines
that were not drowned in laughter Mr. Coates spoke in the most foolish
and extravagant manner. He cut little capers at odd moments. He laid his
hand on his heart and bowed, now to this, now to that part of the house,
always with a grin. In the balcony-scene he produced a snuff-box, and,
after taking a pinch, offered it to the bewildered Juliet. Coming down
to the footlights, he laid it on the cushion of the stage-box and begged
the inmates to refresh themselves, and to 'pass the golden trifle on.'
The performance, so obviously grotesque, was just the kind of thing to
please the gods. The limp of Hephaestus could not have called laughter
so unquenchable from their lips. It is no trifle to set Englishmen
laughing, but once you have done it, you can hardly stop them. Act after
act of the beautiful love-play was performed without one sign of satiety
from the seers of it. The laughter rather swelled in volume. Romeo died
in so ludicrous a way that a cry of 'encoré arose and the death was
actually twice repeated. At the fall of the curtain there was prolonged
applause. Mr. Coates came forward, and the good-humoured public pelted
him with fragments of the benches. One splinter struck his right temple,
inflicting a scar, of which Mr. Coates was, in his old age, not a little
proud. Such is the traditional account of this curious début. Mr. Pryse
Gordon, however, in his memoirs tells another tale. He professes to
have seen nothing peculiar in Romeo's dress, save its display of fine
diamonds, and to have admired the whole interpretation. The attitude
of the audience he attributes to a hostile cabal. John R. and Hunter H.
Robinson, in their memoir of Romeo Coates, echo Mr. Pryse Gordon's tale.
They would have done well to weigh their authorities more accurately.

I had often wondered at this discrepancy between document and tradition.
Last spring, when I was in Bath for a few days, my mind brooded
especially on the question. Indeed, Bath, with her faded memories, her
tristesse, drives one to reverie. Fashion no longer smiles from her
windows nor dances in her sunshine, and in her deserted parks the
invalids build up their constitutions. Now and again, as one of the
frequent chairs glided past me, I wondered if its shadowy freight were
the ghost of poor Romeo. I felt sure that the traditional account of his
début was mainly correct. How could it, indeed, be false? Tradition is
always a safer guide to truth than is the tale of one man. I might amuse
myself here, in Bath, by verifying my notion of the début or proving it
false.

One morning I was walking through a narrow street in the western quarter
of Bath, and came to the window of a very little shop, which was full
of dusty books, prints and engravings. I spied in one corner of it the
discoloured print of a queer, lean figure, posturing in a garden. In one
hand this figure held a snuff-box, in the other an opera-hat. Its sharp
features and wide grin, flanked by luxuriant whiskers, looked strange
under a Caroline wig. Above it was a balcony and a lady in an attitude
of surprise. Beneath it were these words, faintly lettered: Bombastes
Coates wooing the Peerless Capulet, that's 'nough (that snuff) 1809. I
coveted the print. I went into the shop.

A very old man peered at me and asked my errand. I pointed to the print
of Mr. Coates, which he gave me for a few shillings, chuckling at the
pun upon the margin.

'Ah,' he said, 'they're forgetting him now, but he was a fine figure, a
fine sort of figure.'

'You saw him?'

'No, no. I'm only seventy. But I've known those who saw him. My father
had a pile of such prints.'

'Did your father see him?' I asked, as the old man furled my treasure
and tied it with a piece of tape.

'My father, sir, was a friend of Mr. Coates,' he said. 'He entertained
him in Gay Street. Mr. Coates was my father's lodger all the months
he was in Bath. A good tenant, too. Never eccentric under my father's
roof--never eccentric.'

I begged the old bookseller to tell me more of this matter. It seemed
that his father had been a citizen of some consequence, and had owned
a house in modish Gay Street, where he let lodgings. Thither, by the
advice of a friend, Mr. Coates had gone so soon as he arrived in the
town, and had stayed there down to the day after his début, when he left
for London.

'My father often told me that Mr. Coates was crying bitterly when he
settled the bill and got into his travelling-chaise. He'd come back from
the playhouse the night before as cheerful as could be. He'd said he
didn't mind what the public thought of his acting. But in the morning
a letter was brought for him, and when he read it he seemed to go quite
mad.'

'I wonder what was in the letter!' I asked. 'Did your father never know
who sent it?'

'Ah,' my greybeard rejoined, 'that's the most curious thing. And it's a
secret. I can't tell you.'

He was not as good as his word. I bribed him delicately with the
purchase of more than one old book. Also, I think, he was flattered by
my eager curiosity to learn his long-pent secret. He told me that the
letter was brought to the house by one of the footmen of Sir James
Tylney Long, and that his father himself delivered it into the hands of
Mr. Coates.

'When he had read it through, the poor gentleman tore it into many
fragments, and stood staring before him, pale as a ghost. "I must not
stay another hour in Bath," he said. When he was gone, my father (God
forgive him!) gathered up all the scraps of the letter, and for a long
time he tried to piece them together. But there were a great many of
them, and my father was not a scholar, though he was affluent.'

'What became of the scraps?' I asked. 'Did your father keep them?'

'Yes, he did. And I used to try, when I was younger, to make out
something from them. But even I never seemed to get near it. I've never
thrown them away, though. They're in a box.'

I got them for a piece of gold that I could ill spare--some score or
so of shreds of yellow paper, traversed with pale ink. The joy of the
archaeologist with an unknown papyrus, of the detective with a clue,
surged in me. Indeed, I was not sure whether I was engaged in private
inquiry or in research; so recent, so remote was the mystery. After two
days' labour, I marshalled the elusive words. This is the text of them:


MR. COATES, SIR,

They say Revenge is sweet. I am fortunate to find it is so. I
have compelled you to be far more a Fool than you made me at the
fête-champêtre of Lady B. & I, having accomplished my aim, am ready to
forgive you now, as you implored me on the occasion of the fête. But
pray build no Hope that I, forgiving you, will once more regard you as
my Suitor. For that cannot ever be. I decided you should show yourself
a Fool before many people. But such Folly does not commend your hand to
mine. Therefore desist your irksome attention &, if need be, begone from
Bath. I have punished you, & would save my eyes the trouble to turn away
from your person. I pray that you regard this epistle as privileged and
private.

E. T. L. 10 of February.


The letter lies before me as I write. It is written throughout in a
firm and very delicate Italian hand. Under the neat initials is drawn,
instead of the ordinary flourish, an arrow, and the absence of any
erasure in a letter of such moment suggests a calm, deliberate character
and, probably, rough copies. I did not, at the time, suffer my fancy to
linger over the tessellated document. I set to elucidating the reference
to the fête-champêtre. As I retraced my footsteps to the little
bookshop, I wondered if I should find any excuse for the cruel
faithlessness of Emma Tylney Long.

The bookseller was greatly excited when I told him I had re-created the
letter. He was very eager to see it. I did not pander to his curiosity.
He even offered to buy the article back at cost price. I asked him if he
had ever heard, in his youth, of any scene that had passed between Miss
Tylney Long and Mr. Coates at some fête-champêtre. The old man thought
for some time, but he could not help me. Where then, I asked him, could
I search old files of local news-papers? He told me that there were
supposed to be many such files mouldering in the archives of the Town
Hall.

I secured access, without difficulty, to these files. A whole day I
spent in searching the copies issued by this and that journal during the
months that Romeo was in Bath. In the yellow pages of these forgotten
prints I came upon many complimentary allusions to Mr. Coates: 'The
visitor welcomed (by all our aristocracy) from distant Ind,' 'the
ubiquitous,' 'the charitable riche.' Of his 'forthcoming impersonation
of Romeo and Juliet' there were constant puffs, quite in the modern
manner. The accounts of his début all showed that Mr. Pryse Gordon's
account of it was fabulous. In one paper there was a bitter attack on
'Mr. Gordon, who was responsible for this insult to Thespian art, the
gentry, and the people, for he first arranged the whole production'--an
extract which makes it clear that this gentleman had a good motive for
his version of the affair.

But I began to despair of ever learning what happened at the
fête-champêtre. There were accounts of 'a grand garden-party, whereto
Lady Belper, on March the twenty-eighth, invited a host of fashionable
persons.' The names of Mr. Coates and of 'Sir James Tylney Long and his
daughter' were duly recorded in the lists. But that was all. I turned at
length to a tiny file, consisting of five copies only, Bladud's Courier.
Therein I found this paragraph, followed by some scurrilities which I
will not quote:


'Mr. C**t*s, who will act Romeo (Wherefore art thou Romeo?) this
coming week for the pleasure of his fashionable circle, incurred the
contemptuous wrath of his Lady Fair at the Fête. It was a sad pity she
entrusted him to hold her purse while she fed the gold-fishes. He was
very proud of the honour till the gold fell from his hand among the
gold-fishes. How appropriate was the misadventure! But Miss Black Eyes,
angry at her loss and her swain's clumsiness, cried: "Jump into the
pond, sir, and find my purse instanter!" Several wags encouraged her,
and the ladies were of the opinion that her adorer should certainly dive
for the treasure. "Alas," the fellow said, "I cannot swim, Miss. But
tell me how many guineas you carried and I will make them good to
yourself." There was a great deal of laughter at this encounter, and the
haughty damsel turned on her heel, nor did shoe vouchsafe another word
to her elderly lover.

'When recreant man Meets lady's wrath, &c. &c.'


So the story of the début was complete! Was ever a lady more inexorable,
more ingenious, in her revenge? One can fancy the poor Antiguan going to
the Baronet's house next day with a bouquet of flowers and passionately
abasing himself, craving her forgiveness. One can fancy the wounded
vanity of the girl, her shame that people had mocked her for the
disobedience of her suitor. Revenge, as her letter shows, became her
one thought. She would strike him through his other love, the love of
Thespis. 'I have compelled you,' she wrote afterwards, in her bitter
triumph, 'to be a greater Fool than you made me.' She, then, it was that
drove him to his public absurdity, she who insisted that he should never
win her unless he sacrificed his dear longing for stage-laurels and
actually pilloried himself upon the stage. The wig, the pantaloons, the
snuff-box, the grin, were all conceived, I fancy, in her pitiless spite.
It is possible that she did but say: 'The more ridiculous you make
yourself, the more hope for you.' But I do not believe that Mr. Coates,
a man of no humour, conceived the means himself. They were surely hers.

It is terrible to think of the ambitious amateur in his bedroom,
secretly practising hideous antics or gazing at his absurd apparel
before a mirror. How loath must he have been to desecrate the lines he
loved so dearly and had longed to declaim in all their beauty and their
resonance! And then, what irony at the daily rehearsal! With how sad a
smile must he have received the compliments of Mr. Dimonds on his
fine performance, knowing how different it would all be 'on the night!
'Nothing could have steeled him to the ordeal but his great love. He
must have wavered, had not the exaltation of his love protected him. But
the jeers of the mob were music in his hearing, his wounds love-symbols.
Then came the girl's cruel contempt of his martyrdom.

Aphrodite, who has care of lovers, did not spare Miss Tylney Long. She
made her love, a few months after, one who married her for her fortune
and broke her heart. In years of misery the wayward girl worked out
the penance of her unpardonable sin, dying, at length, in poverty and
despair. Into the wounds of him who had so truly loved her was poured,
after a space of fourteen years, the balsam of another love. On the 6th
September 1823, at St. George's, Hanover Square, Mr. Coates was married
to Miss Anne Robinson, who was a faithful and devoted wife to him till
he died.

Meanwhile, the rejected Romeo did not long repine. Two months after the
tragedy at Bath, he was at Brighton, mingling with all the fashionable
folk, and giving admirable recitations at routs. He was seen every day
on the Parade, attired in an extravagant manner, very different to that
he had adopted in Bath. A pale-blue surtout, tasselled Hessians, and a
cocked hat were the most obvious items of his costume. He also affected
a very curious tumbril, shaped like a shell and richly gilded. In
this he used to drive around, every afternoon, amid the gapes of the
populace. It is evident that, once having tasted the fruit of notoriety,
he was loath to fall back on simpler fare. He had become a prey to the
love of absurd ostentation. A lively example of dandyism unrestrained
by taste, he parodied in his person the foibles of Mr. Brummell and the
King. His diamonds and his equipage and other follies became the
gossip of every newspaper in England. Nor did a day pass without the
publication of some little rigmarole from his pen. Wherever there was a
vacant theatre--were it in Cheltenham, Birmingham, or any other town--he
would engage it for his productions. One night he would play his
favourite part, Romeo, with reverence and ability. The next, he would
repeat his first travesty in all its hideous harlequinade. Indeed, there
can be little doubt that Mr. Coates, with his vile performances, must
be held responsible for the decline of dramatic art in England and the
invasion of the amateur. The sight of such folly, strutting unabashed,
spoilt the prestige of the theatre. To-day our stage is filled with
tailors'-dummy heroes, with heroines who have real curls and can open
and shut their eyes and, at a pinch, say 'mamma' and 'papa.' We
must blame the Antiguan, I fear, for their existence. It was he--the
rascal--who first spread that scenae sacra fames. Some say that he was
a schemer and impostor, feigning eccentricity for his private ends. They
are quite wrong; Mr. Coates was a very good man. He never made a penny
out of his performances; he even lost many hundred pounds. Moreover, as
his speeches before the curtain and his letters to the papers show,
he took himself quite seriously. Only the insane take themselves quite
seriously.

It was the unkindness of his love that maddened him. But he lived to
be the lightest-hearted of lunatics and caused great amusement for many
years. Whether we think of him in his relation to history or psychology,
dandiacal or dramatic art, he is a salient, pathetic figure. That he is
memorable for his defects, not for his qualities, I know. But Romeo,
in the tragedy of his wild love and frail intellect, in the folly that
stretched the corners of his 'peculiar grin' and shone in his diamonds
and was emblazoned upon his tumbril, is more suggestive than some sages.
He was so fantastic an animal that Oblivion were indeed amiss. If no
more, he was a great Fool. In any case, it would be fun to have seen
him.

London, 1896.




Diminuendo

In the year of grace 1890, and in the beautiful autumn of that year, I
was a freshman at Oxford. I remember how my tutor asked me what lectures
I wished to attend, and how he laughed when I said that I wished to
attend the lectures of Mr. Walter Pater. Also I remember how, one
morning soon after, I went into Ryman's to order some foolish engraving
for my room, and there saw, peering into a portfolio, a small, thick,
rock-faced man, whose top-hat and gloves of bright dog-skin struck one
of the many discords in that little city of learning or laughter. The
serried bristles of his moustachio made for him a false-military air. I
think I nearly went down when they told me that this was Pater.

Not that even in those more decadent days of my childhood did I admire
the man as a stylist. Even then I was angry that he should treat English
as a dead language, bored by that sedulous ritual wherewith he laid out
every sentence as in a shroud--hanging, like a widower, long over its
marmoreal beauty or ever he could lay it at length in his book, its
sepulchre. From that laden air, the so cadaverous murmur of that
sanctuary, I would hook it at the beck of any jade. The writing of Pater
had never, indeed, appealed to me, all' aiei, having regard to the couth
solemnity of his mind, to his philosophy, his rare erudition, tina phôta
megan kai kalon edegmen [I received some great and beautiful light]. And
I suppose it was when at length I saw him that I first knew him to be
fallible.

At school I had read Marius the Epicurean in bed and with a dark
lantern. Indeed, I regarded it mainly as a tale of adventure, quite as
fascinating as Midshipman Easy, and far less hard to understand, because
there were no nautical terms in it. Marryat, moreover, never made me
wish to run away to sea, whilst certainly Pater did make me wish for
more 'colour' in the curriculum, for a renaissance of the Farrar
period, when there was always 'a sullen spirit of revolt against the
authorities'; when lockers were always being broken into and marks
falsified, and small boys prevented from saying their prayers, insomuch
that they vowed they would no longer buy brandy for their seniors. In
some schools, I am told, the pretty old custom of roasting a fourth-form
boy, whole, upon Founder's Day still survives. But in my school there
was less sentiment. I ended by acquiescing in the slow revolution of its
wheel of work and play. I felt that at Oxford, when I should be of age
to matriculate, a 'variegated dramatic lifé was waiting for me. I was
not a little too sanguine, alas!

How sad was my coming to the university! Where were those sweet
conditions I had pictured in my boyhood? Those antique contrasts? Did
I ride, one sunset, through fens on a palfrey, watching the gold
reflections on Magdalen Tower? Did I ride over Magdalen Bridge and hear
the consonance of evening-bells and cries from the river below? Did I
rein in to wonder at the raised gates of Queen's, the twisted pillars of
St. Mary's, the little shops, lighted with tapers? Did bull-pups snarl
at me, or dons, with bent backs, acknowledge my salute? Any one who
knows the place as it is, must see that such questions are purely
rhetorical. To him I need not explain the disappointment that beset me
when, after being whirled in a cab from the station to a big hotel, I
wandered out into the streets. On aurait dit a bit of Manchester through
which Apollo had once passed; for here, among the hideous trains and the
brand-new bricks--here, glared at by the electric-lights that hung from
poles, screamed at by boys with the Echo and the Star--here, in a riot
of vulgarity, were remnants of beauty, as I discerned. There were only
remnants.

Soon also I found that the life of the place, like the place, had
lost its charm and its tradition. Gone were the contrasts that made it
wonderful. That feud between undergraduates and dons--latent, in the
old days, only at times when it behoved the two academic grades to unite
against the townspeople--was one of the absurdities of the past. The
townspeople now looked just like undergraduates and the dons just like
townspeople. So splendid was the train-service between Oxford and London
that, with hundreds of passengers daily, the one had become little
better than a suburb of the other. What more could extensionists demand?
As for me, I was disheartened. Bitter were the comparisons I drew
between my coming to Oxford and the coming of Marius to Rome. Could it
be that there was at length no beautiful environment wherein a man might
sound the harmonies of his soul? Had civilisation made beauty, besides
adventure, so rare? I wondered what counsel Pater, insistent always upon
contact with comely things, would offer to one who could nowhere find
them. I had been wondering that very day when I went into Ryman's and
saw him there.

When the tumult of my disillusioning was past, my mind grew clearer. I
discerned that the scope of my quest for emotion must be narrowed. That
abandonment of one's self to life, that merging of one's soul in bright
waters, so often suggested in Pater's writing, were a counsel impossible
for to-day. The quest of emotions must be no less keen, certainly, but
the manner of it must be changed forthwith. To unswitch myself from my
surroundings, to guard my soul from contact with the unlovely things
that compassed it about, therein lay my hope. I must approach the Benign
Mother with great caution. And so, while most of the freshmen 'were
doing her honour with wine and song and wreaths of smoke, I stood aside,
pondered. In such seclusion I passed my first term--ah, how often did
I wonder whether I was not wasting my days, and, wondering, abandon my
meditations upon the right ordering of the future! Thanks be to Athene,
who threw her shadow over me in those moments of weak folly!

At the end of term I came to London. Around me seethed swirls, eddies,
torrents, violent cross-currents of human activity. What uproar!
Surely I could have no part in modern life. Yet, yet for a while it was
fascinating to watch the ways of its children. The prodigious life of
the Prince of Wales fascinated me above all; indeed, it still fascinates
me. What experience has been withheld from His Royal High-ness? Was ever
so supernal a type, as he, of mere Pleasure? How often he has watched,
at Newmarket, the scud-a-run of quivering homuncules over the vert on
horses, or, from some night-boat, the holocaust of great wharves by
the side of the Thames; raced through the blue Solent; threaded les
coulisses! He has danced in every palace of every capital, played in
every club. He has hunted eleplants through the jungles of India, boar
through the forests of Austria, pigs over the plains of Massachusetts.
From the Castle of Abergeldie he has led his Princess into the frosty
night, Highlanders lighting with torches the path to the deer-larder,
where lay the wild things that had fallen to him on the crags. He has
marched the Grenadiers to chapel through the white streets of Windsor.
He has ridden through Moscow, in strange apparel, to kiss the catafalque
of more than one Tzar. For him the Rajahs of India have spoiled their
temples, and Blondin has crossed Niagara along the tight-rope, and the
Giant Guard done drill beneath the chandeliers of the Neue Schloss.
Incline he to scandal, lawyers are proud to whisper their secrets in
his ear. Be he gallant, the ladies are at his feet. Ennuyé, all the wits
from Bernal Osborne to Arthur Roberts have jested for him. He has been
'present always at the focus where the greatest number of forces unite
in their purest energy,' for it is his presence that makes those forces
unite.

'Ennuyé?' I asked. Indeed he never is. How could he be when Pleasure
hangs constantly upon his arm! It is those others, overtaking her only
after arduous chase, breathless and footsore, who quickly sicken of her
company, and fall fainting at her feet. And for me, shod neither with
rank nor riches, what folly to join the chase! I began to see how small
a thing it were to sacrifice those external 'experiences,' so dear to
the heart of Pater, by a rigid, complex civilisation made so hard to
gain. They gave nothing but lassitude to those who had gained them
through suffering. Even to the kings and princes, who so easily gained
them, what did they yield besides themselves? I do not suppose that, if
we were invited to give authenticated instances of intelligence on the
part of our royal pets, we could fill half a column of the Spectator. In
fact, their lives are so full they have no time for thought, the highest
energy of man. Now, it was to thought that my life should be dedicated.
Action, apart from its absorption of time, would war otherwise against
the pleasures of intellect, which, for me, meant mainly the pleasures
of imagination. It is only (this is a platitude) the things one has not
done, the faces or places one has not seen, or seen but darkly, that
have charm. It is only mystery--such mystery as besets the eyes of
children--that makes things superb. I thought of the voluptuaries I
had known--they seemed so sad, so ascetic almost, like poor pilgrims,
raising their eyes never or ever gazing at the moon of tarnished
endeavour. I thought of the round, insouciant faces of the monks at
whose monastery I once broke bread, and how their eyes sparkled when
they asked me of the France that lay around their walls. I thought,
pardie, of the lurid verses written by young men who, in real life, know
no haunt more lurid than a literary public-house. It was, for me,
merely a problem how I could best avoid 'sensations,' 'pulsations,'
and 'exquisite moments' that were not purely intellectual. I would not
attempt to combine both kinds, as Pater seemed to fancy a man might. I
would make myself master of some small area of physical life, a life of
quiet, monotonous simplicity, exempt from all outer disturbance. I would
shield my body from the world that my mind might range over it, not hurt
nor fettered. As yet, however, I was in my first year at Oxford. There
were many reasons that I should stay there and take my degree, reasons
that I did not combat. Indeed, I was content to wait for my life.

And now that I have made my adieux to the Benign Mother, I need wait no
longer. I have been casting my eye over the suburbs of London. I have
taken a most pleasant little villa in ----ham, and here I shall make my
home. Here there is no traffic, no harvest. Those of the inhabitants
who do anything go away each morning and do it elsewhere. Here no vital
forces unite. Nothing happens here. The days and the months will pass by
me, bringing their sure recurrence of quiet events. In the spring-time
I shall look out from my window and see the laburnum flowering in the
little front garden. In summer cool syrups will come for me from the
grocer's shop. Autumn will make the boughs of my mountain-ash scarlet,
and, later, the asbestos in my grate will put forth its blossoms of
flame. The infrequent cart of Buszard or Mudie will pass my window at
all seasons. Nor will this be all. I shall have friends. Next door,
there is a retired military man who has offered, in a most neighbourly
way, to lend me his copy of the Times. On the other side of my house
lives a charming family, who perhaps will call on me, now and again.
I have seen them sally forth, at sundown, to catch the theatre-train;
among them walked a young lady, the charm of whose figure was ill
concealed by the neat waterproof that overspread her evening dress.
Some day it may be...but I anticipate. These things will be but the cosy
accompaniment of my days. For I shall contemplate the world.

I shall look forth from my window, the laburnum and the mountain-ash
becoming mere silhouettes in the foreground of my vision. I shall look
forth and, in nay remoteness, appreciate the distant pageant of the
world. Humanity will range itself in the columns of my morning paper. No
pulse of life will escape me. The strife of politics, the intriguing of
courts, the wreck of great vessels, wars, dramas, earthquakes,
national griefs or joys; the strange sequels to divorces, even, and the
mysterious suicides of land-agents at Ipswich--in all such phenomena I
shall steep my exhaurient mind. Delicias quoque bibliothecae experiar.
Tragedy, comedy, chivalry, philosophy will be mine. I shall listen to
their music perpetually and their colours will dance before my eyes. I
shall soar from terraces of stone upon dragons with shining wings
and make war upon Olympus. From the peaks of hills I shall swoop into
recondite valleys and drive the pigmies, shrieking little curses, to
their caverns. It may be my whim to wander through infinite parks where
the deer lie under the clustering shadow of their antlers and flee
lightly over the grass; to whisper with white prophets under the elms or
bind a child with a daisy-chain or, with a lady, thread my way through
the acacias. I shall swim down rivers into the sea and outstrip all
ships. Unhindered I shall penetrate all sanctuaries and snatch the
secrets of every dim confessional.

Yes! among books that charm, and give wings to the mind, will my days be
spent. I shall be ever absorbing the things great men have written; with
such experience I will charge my mind to the full. Nor will I try to
give anything in return. Once, in the delusion that Art, loving the
recluse, would make his life happy, I wrote a little for a yellow
quarterly and had that succès de fiasco which is always given to a young
writer of talent. But the stress of creation soon overwhelmed me. Only
Art with a capital H gives any consolations to her henchmen. And I, who
crave no knighthood, shall write no more. I shall write no more. Already
I feel myself to be a trifle outmoded. I belong to the Beardsley period.
Younger men, with months of activity before them, with fresher schemes
and notions, with newer enthusiasm, have pressed forward since then.
Cedo junioribus. Indeed, I stand aside with no regret. For to be
outmoded is to be a classic, if one has written well. I have acceded to
the hierarchy of good scribes and rather like my niche.

Chicago, 1895.




THE WORKS OF MAX BEERBOHM A BIBLIOGRAPHY

By John Lane


PREFACE

After some considerable experience in the field of bibliography I cannot
plead as palliation for any imperfections that may be discovered in
this, that it is the work of a 'prentice hand. Difficult as I found my
self-imposed task in the case of the Meredith and Hardy bibliographies,
here my labour has been still more herculean.

It is impossible for one to compile a bibliography of a great man's
works without making it in some sense a biography--and indeed, in the
minds of not a few people, I have found a delusion that the one is
identical with the other.

Mr. Beerbohm, as will be seen from the page headed Personalia, was
born in London, August 24, 1872. In searching the files of the Times I
naturally looked for other remarkable occurrences on that date. There
was only one worth recording. On the day upon which Mr. Beerbohm
was born, there appeared in the first column of the Times, this
announcement:

'On [Wednesday], the 21st August, at Brighton, the wife of V.P.
Beardsley, Esq., of a son.'

That the same week should have seen the advent in this world of two such
notable reformers as Aubrey Beardsley and Max Beerbohm is a coincidence
to which no antiquary has previously drawn attention. Is it possible to
over-estimate the influence of these two men in the art and literature
of the century?

Like two other great essayists, Addison and Steele, Mr. Beerbohm was
educated at Charterhouse, and, like the latter, at Merton College,
Oxford. At Charterhouse he is still remembered for his Latin verses,
and for the superb gallery of portraits of the masters that he completed
during his five years' sojourn there. There are still extant a few
copies of his satire, in Latin elegiacs, called Beccerius, privately
printed at the suggestion of Mr. A. H. Tod, his form-master. The writer
has said 'Let it lie,' however, and in such a matter the author's wish
should surely be regarded. I have myself been unable to obtain a sight
of a copy, but a more fortunate friend has furnished me with a careful
description of the opusculum, which I print in its place in the
bibliography.

He matriculated at Merton in 1890, and immediately applied himself to
the task he had set before him, namely, a gallery of portraits of the
Dons.

I am aware that he contributed to The Clown and other undergraduate
journals: also that he was a member of the Myrmidons' Club. It was
during his residence at Oxford that his famous treatise on Cosmetics
appeared in the pages of an important London Quarterly, sets of which
are still occasionally to be found in booksellers' catalogues at a high
price, though the American millionaire collector has made it one of the
rarest of finds. These were the days of his youth, the golden age of
'decadence.' For is not decadence merely a fin de siècle literary term
synonymous with the 'sowing his wild oats' of our grandfathers? a phrase
still surviving in agricultural districts, according to Mr. Andrew Lang,
Mr. Edward Clodd, and other Folk-Lorists.

Mr. Beerbohm, of course, was not the only writer of his period who
appeared as the champion of artifice. A contemporary, one Richard Le
Gallienne, an eminent Pose Fancier, has committed himself somewhere to
the statement that 'The bravest men that ever trod this planet have worn
corsets.'

But what is so far away as yester-year? In 1894, Mr. Beerbohm, in virtue
of his 'Defence of Cosmetics,' was but a pamphleteer. In 1895 he was
the famous historian, for in that year appeared the two earliest of his
profound historical studies, The History of the Year 1880, and his work
on King George the Fourth. During the growth of these masterpieces, his
was a familiar figure in the British Museum and the Record Office, and
tradition asserts that the enlargement of the latter building, which
took place some time shortly afterwards, was mainly owing to his
exertions.

Attended by his half-brother, Mr. Tree, Mrs. Tree and a numerous
theatrical suite, he sailed on the 16th of January 1895, for America,
with a view, it is said, to establishing a monarchy in that land. Mr.
Beerbohm does not appear to have succeeded in this project, though he
was interviewed in many of the newspapers of the States. He returned, re
infecta, to the land of his birth, three months later.

After that he devoted himself to the completion of his life-work, here
set forth.

The materials for this collection were drawn, with the courteous
acquiescence of various publishers, from The Pageant, The Savoy,
The Chap Book, and The Yellow Book. Internal evidence shows that Mr.
Beerbohm took fragments of his writings from Vanity (of New York) and
The Unicorn, that he might inlay them in the First Essay, of whose
scheme they are really a part. The Third Essay he re-wrote. The rest he
carefully revised, and to some he gave new names.

Although it was my privilege on one occasion to meet Mr. Beerbohm--at
five-o'clock tea--when advancing years, powerless to rob him of one
shade of his wonderful urbanity, had nevertheless imprinted evidence of
their flight in the pathetic stoop, and the low melancholy voice of one
who, though resigned, yet yearns for the happier past, I feel that
too precise a description of his personal appearance would savour of
impertinence. The curious, on this point, I must refer to Mr. Sickert's
and Mr. Rothenstein's portraits, which I hear that Mr. Lionel Cust is
desirous of acquiring for the National Portrait Gallery.

It is needless to say that this bibliography has been a labour of love,
and that any further information readers may care to send me will be
gladly incorporated in future editions.

I must here express my indebtedness to Dr. Garnett, C.B., Mr. Bernard
Quaritch, Mr. Clement K. Shorter, Mr. L. F. Austin, Mr. J. M. Bullock,
Mr. Lewis Hind, Mr. and Mrs. H. Beerbohm Tree, Mrs. Leverson, and Miss
Grace Conover, without whose assistance my work would have been far more
arduous.

J.L. THE ALBANY, May 1896.




THE BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE WORKS OF MAX BEERBOHM

1886.

A Letter to the Editor. The Carthusian, Dec. 1886, signed Diogenes. A
bitter cry of complaint against the dulness of the school paper. [Not
reprinted.]


[1890.]

Beccerius | a Latin fragment | with explanatory notes by M.B. [N.D.
About twelve couplets printed on rough yellow paper, pp. 1 to 4,
cr. 8vo, notes in double columns at foot of page. No publisher's or
printer's name.


1894.

A Defence of Cosmetics. The Yellow Book, Vol. I., April 1894, pp. 65-82.
Reprinted in 'The Works' under the title of 'The Pervasion of Rouge.'

Lines suggested by Miss Cissy Loftus. The Sketch, May 9, 1894, p. 71. A
Caricature. [Not reprinted.

Mr. Phil May and Mr. Aubrey Beardsley. The Pall Mall Budget, June 7,
1894. Two Caricatures. [Not reprinted.

Two Eminent Statesmen (the Rt. Hon. A. J. Balfour and the Rt. Hon. Sir
Wm. Harcourt). Pall Mall Budget, July 5, 1894. Two Caricatures. [Not
reprinted.

Two Eminent Actors (Mr. Beerbohm Tree and Mr. Edward Terry). Pall Mall
Budget, July 26, 1894. Two Caricatures. [Not reprinted.

A Letter to the Editor. The Yellow Book, Vol. II., July 1894, pp.
281-284. [Not reprinted.

Personal Remarks: Gus Elen (Caricature). Pick-Me-Up, Sept. 15, 1894.
[Not reprinted.

Personal Remarks: Oscar Wilde (Caricature). Pick-Me-Up, Sept. 22, 1894.
[Not reprinted.

Personal Remarks: R. G. Knowles, 'Theres a picture for you!'
(Caricature). Pick-Me-Up, Sept. 29, 1894. [Not reprinted.

M. Henri Rochefort and Mr. Arthur Roberts. Pall Mall Budget, Oct. 4,
1894. Two Caricatures. [Not reprinted.

Personal Remarks: Henry Arthur Jones (Caricature). Pick-Me-Up, Oct. 6,
1894. [Not reprinted.

Personal Remarks: Harry Furniss (Caricature). Pick-Me-Up, Oct. 13, 1894.
[Not reprinted.

A Caricature of George the Fourth. The Yellow Book, Vol. III., Oct.
1894. [Not reprinted.

A Note on George the Fourth. The Yellow Book, Vol. III., Oct. 1894, pp.
247-269. Reprinted in 'The Works' under the title of 'King George the
Fourth.' A parody of this appeared under the title of 'A Phalse Note on
George the Fourth,' in Punch, October 27, 1894, p. 204.

Personal Remarks: Lord Lonsdale (Caricature). Pick-Me-Up, Oct 20, 1894.
[Not reprinted.

Personal Remarks: W. S. Gilbert (Caricature). Pick-Me-Up, Oct. 27,
1894. [Not reprinted.

Personal Remarks: L. Raven Hill (Caricature). Pick- Me-Up, Nov. 3, 1894.
[Not reprinted.

Personal Remarks: The Marquis of Queensberry (Caricature). Pick-Me-Up,
Nov. 17, 1894. [Not reprinted.

Personal Remarks: Ada Reeve (Caricature). Pick-Me-Up, Nov. 24, 1894.
[Not reprinted.

Personal Remarks: Seymour Hicks (Caricature). Pick-Me-Up, Dec. 1, 1894.
[Not reprinted.

Personal Remarks: Corney Grain (Caricature). Pick-Me-Up, Dec. 8, 1894.
[Not reprinted.

Personal Remarks: Lord Randolph Churchill (Caricature). Pick-Me-Up, Dec.
22, 1894. [Not reprinted.

Personal Remarks: Dutch Daly (Caricature). Pick-Me-Up, Dec. 29, 1894.
[Not reprinted.


1895.

Character Sketches of 'The Chieftain' at the Savoy. I. Mr. Courtice
Pounds. II. Mr. Scott Fishe. III. Mr. Walter Passmore. Pick-Me-Up, Jan.
5, 1895. [Not reprinted.

Personal Remarks: Henry Irving (Caricature). Pick-Me-Up, Jan. 5, 1895.

'1880.' The Yellow Book, Vol. IV., Jan. 1895, pp. 275-283. Reprinted in
'The Works.' A parody of this appeared, under the title of '1894,' by
Max Mereboom, in Punch, February 2, 1895, p. 58.

Character Sketches of 'An Ideal Husband' at the Haymarket. I. Mr.
Bishop. II. Mr. Charles Hawtrey. III. Miss Julia Neilson. Pick-Me-Up,
Jan. 19, 1895. [Not reprinted.

Personal Remarks: Harry Marks (Caricature). Pick-Me-Up, Jan. 19, 1895.
[Not reprinted.

Personal Remarks: F. C. Burnand (Caricature). Pick-Me-Up, Jan. 26, 1895.
[Not reprinted.

Dandies and Dandies. Vanity (New York). Feb. 7, 1895. The above has been
reprinted with additions and alterations in 'The Works.'

Personal Remarks: Arthur Pinero (Caricature). Pick-Me-Up, Feb. 9, 1895.
[Not reprinted.

Dandies and Dandies. Vanity (New York). Feb. 14, 1895.

Dandies and Dandies. Vanity (New York). Feb. 21, 1895. The above have
been reprinted with additions and alterations in 'The Works.'

Personal Remarks: The Rt. Hon. Sir William Vernon Harcourt (Caricature).
Pick-Me-Up, Feb. 23, 1895. [Not reprinted.

Dandies and Dandies. Vanity (New York). Feb. 28, 1895. The above has
been reprinted with additions and alterations in 'The Works.'

Personal Remarks: Earl Spencer (Caricature). Pick-Me-Up, March 9, 1895.
[Not reprinted.

Personal Remarks: Arthur Balfour (Caricature). Pick-Me-Up, March 16,
1895. [Not reprinted.

Personal Remarks: S. B. Bancroft (Caricature). Pick-Me-Up, March 23,
1895. [Not reprinted.

Personal Remarks: Paderewski (Caricature). Pick-Me-Up, March 30, 1895. .
[Not reprinted.

Personal Remarks: Colonel North (Caricature). Pick-Me-Up, April 6, 1895.
[Not reprinted.

Personal Remarks: Alfred de Rothschild. Pick-Me-Up, April 20, 189;. [Not
reprinted.

Merton. (The Warden of Merton.) The Octopus, May 25, 1895. A Caricature.
[Not reprinted.

Seen on the Towpath. The Octopus, May 29, 1895. A Caricature. [Not
reprinted.

An Evening of Peculiar Delirium. The Sketch, July 24, 1895. [Not
reprinted.

Notes in Foppery. The Unicorn, Sept. 18, 1895.

Notes in Foppery. The Unicorn, Sept. 25, 1895. The above have been
reprinted with additions and alterations in 'The Works,' under the title
of 'Dandies and Dandies.'

Press Notices on 'Punch and Judy,' selected by Max Beerbohm. The Sketch,
Oct. 16, 1895 (p. 644). [Not reprinted.

Be it Cosiness. The Pageant, Christmas, 1895, pp. 230-235. Reprinted in
'The Works' under the title of 'Diminuendo.' A parody of this appeared,
under the title of 'Be it Cosiness,' by Max Mereboom, in Punch, Dec. 21,
1895, p. 297.


1896.

A Caricature of Mr. Beerbohm Tree, a wood engraving after the drawing by
Max Beerbohm. The Savoy, No. 1, Jan. 1896, p. 125. [Not reprinted.

A Good Prince. The Savoy, No. 1, Jan. 1896, pp. 45-7. [Reprinted in 'The
Works.'

De Natura Barbatulorum. The Chap-Book, Feb. 15, 1896, pp. 305-312. The
above has been reprinted with additions and alterations in 'The Works,'
under the title of 'Dandies and Dandies.'

Poor Romeo! The Yellow Book, Vol. IX., April '96, pp. 169-181.
[Reprinted in 'The Works.'

A Caricature of Aubrey Beardsley. A wood engraving after the drawing by
Max Beerbohm. The Savoy, No. 2, April 1896, p. 161.


PERSONALIA.

On the 24th instant, at 57 Palace Gardens Terrace, Kensington, the wife
of J. E. Beerbohm, Esq., of a son. The Times, Aug. 26, 1872.

A few words with Mr. Max Beerbohm. (An interview by Ada Leverson.) The
Sketch, Jan. 2, 1895, p. 439.

Max Beerbohm: an interview by Isabel Brooke Alder. Woman, April 29,
1896, pp. 8 & 9.

On Mr. Beerbohm leaving Oxford in July 1895, he took up his residence
at 19 Hyde Park Place, formerly the residence of another well-known
historian--W. C. Kinglake. Woman, April 29, 1896, p. 8.


PORTRAITS OF MR. MAX BEERBOHM.

Max Beerbohm in 'Boyhood.' The Sketch, Jan. 2, 189;, p. 439.

Max Beerbohm. Oxford Characters. Lithographs by Will Rothenstein. Part
6. It is believed this artist did several pastels of Mr. Beerbohm.

Portrait of Mr. Beerbohm standing before a picture of George the Fourth,
by Walter Sickert.

Mr. Max Beerbohm. Woman, April 29, 1896, p. 8.





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