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 approximatetranslations:

--philomathestatoi ton neaniskon: some of the youths most eager forknowledge

--Nêpios: childish

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

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

--all' aiei: but always

--tina phôta megan kai kalon edegmen: I received some great andbeautiful 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 perspectiveand crude colour, they have indeed the sentiment of style, and theyreveal, with surer delicacy than does any other record, the spirit ofMr. Brummell's day. Grego guides me, as Virgil Dante, through allthe mysteries of that other world. He shows me those stiff-necked, over-hatted, wasp-waisted gentlemen, drinking Burgundy in the Café desMilles Colonnes or riding through the village of Newmarket upon theirfat cobs or gambling at Crockford's. Grego's Green Room of the OperaHouse always delights me. The formal way in which Mdlle. Mercandotti isstanding upon one leg for the pleasure of Lord Fife and Mr. Ball Hughes;the grave regard directed by Lord Petersham towards that pretty littlemaid-a-mischief who is risking her rouge beneath the chandelier; theunbridled decorum of Mdlle. Hullin and the decorous debauchery of PrinceEsterhazy in the distance, make altogether a quite enchanting picture. But, of the whole series, the most illuminative picture is certainly theBall at Almack's. In the foreground stand two little figures, beneathwhom, on the nether margin, are inscribed those splendid words, BeauBrummell in Deep Conversation with the Duchess of Rutland. The Duchessis a girl in pink, with a great wedge-comb erect among her ringlets, theBeau très dégagé, his head averse, his chin most supercilious upon hisstock, one foot advanced, the gloved fingers of one hand caught lightlyin 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 uttersimplicity of his attire. The 'countless rings' affected by D'Orsay, themany 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 finescorn of accessories that we may trace that first aim of moderndandyism, the production of the supreme effect through means theleast extravagant? In certain congruities of dark cloth, in the rigidperfection of his linen, in the symmetry of his glove with his hand, laythe secret of Mr. Brummell's miracles. He was ever most economical, mostscrupulous of means. Treatment was everything with him. Even foolishGrace and foolish Philip Wharton, in their book about the beaux andwits of this period, speak of his dressing-room as 'a studio in whichhe daily composed that elaborate portrait of himself which was to beexhibited for a few hours in the clubrooms of the town. ' Mr. Brummellwas, indeed, in the utmost sense of the word, an artist. No poet norcook nor sculptor, ever bore that title more worthily than he. 

And really, outside his art, Mr. Brummell had a personality of almostBalzacian insignificance. There have been dandies, like D'Orsay, whowere nearly painters; painters, like Mr. Whistler, who wished to bedandies; dandies, like Disraeli, who afterwards followed some lessarduous 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 toflee 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 ashe in avoiding that strict alternative of study and athletics whichwe force upon our youth. He once terrified a master, named Parker, by asserting that he thought cricket 'foolish. ' Another time, afterlistening to a reprimand from the headmaster, he twitted that learnedman with the asymmetry of his neckcloth. Even in Oriel he could seelittle charm, and was glad to leave it, at the end of his first year, for a commission in the Tenth Hussars. Crack though the regimentwas--indeed, all the commissions were granted by the Regenthimself--young Mr. Brummell could not bear to see all hisbrother-officers in clothes exactly like his own; was quite as deeplyannoyed as would be some god, suddenly entering a restaurant of manymirrors. One day, he rode upon parade in a pale blue tunic, withsilver epaulettes. The Colonel, apologising for the narrow system whichcompelled him to so painful a duty, asked him to leave the parade. TheBeau saluted, trotted back to quarters and, that afternoon, sent in hispapers. Henceforth he lived freely as a fop, in his maturity, should. 

His début in the town was brilliant and delightful. Tales of hiselegance had won for him there a precedent fame. He was reputed rich. It was known that the Regent desired his acquaintance. And thus, Fortunespeeding the wheels of his cabriolet and Fashion running to meet himwith smiles and roses in St. James's, he might well, had he been worldlyor a weakling, have yielded his soul to the polite follies. But hepassed them by. Once he was settled in his suite, he never reallystrayed from his toilet-table, save for a few brief hours. Thrice everyday of the year did he dress, and three hours were the average of hisevery toilet, and other hours were spent in council with the cutter ofhis coats or with the custodian of his wardrobe. A single, devoted life!To Whités, to routs, to races, he went, it is true, not reluctantly. Hewas known to have played battledore and shuttlecock in a moonlit gardenwith Mr. Previté and some other gentlemen. His elopement with a youngCountess from a ball at Lady Jersey's was quite notorious. It was evenwhispered that he once, in the company of some friends, made as thoughhe would wrench the knocker off the door of some shop. But these thingshe did, not, most certainly, for any exuberant love of life. Rather didhe regard them as healthful exercise of the body and a charm againstthat dreaded corpulency which, in the end, caused his downfall. Somerecreation from his work even the most strenuous artist must have; andMr. Brummell naturally sought his in that exalted sphere whose modishelegance accorded best with his temperament, the sphere of le plus beaumonde. General Bucknall used to growl, from the window of the Guards'Club, that such a fellow was only fit to associate with tailors. Butthat was an old soldier's fallacy. The proper associates of an artistare they who practise his own art rather than they who--howeverhonourably--do but cater for its practice. For the rest, I am sure thatMr. Brummell was no lackey, as they have suggested. He wished merely tobe seen by those who were best qualified to appreciate the splendour ofhis achievements. Shall not the painter show his work in galleries, thepoet flit down Paternoster Row? Of rank, for its own sake, Mr. Brummellhad no love. He patronised all his patrons. Even to the Regent hisattitude was always that of a master in an art to one who is sincerelywilling and anxious to learn from him. 

Indeed, English society is always ruled by a dandy, and the moreabsolutely ruled the greater that dandy be. For dandyism, the perfectflower of outward elegance, is the ideal it is always striving torealise in its own rather incoherent way. But there is no reason whydandyism should be confused, as it has been by nearly all writers, withmere social life. Its contact with social life is, indeed, but one ofthe accidents of an art. Its influence, like the scent of a flower, isdiffused unconsciously. It has its own aims and laws, and knows noneother. And the only person who ever fully acknowledged this truthin aesthetics is, of all persons most unlikely, the author of SartorResartus. That any one who dressed so very badly as did Thomas Carlyleshould have tried to construct a philosophy of clothes has always seemedto me one of the most pathetic things in literature. He in the Templeof Vestments! Why sought he to intrude, another Clodius, upon thosemysteries and light his pipe from those ardent censers? What were hishobnails that they should mar the pavement of that delicate Temple? Yet, for that he betrayed one secret rightly heard there, will I pardon hissacrilege. 'A dandy, ' he cried through the mask of Teufelsdröck, 'is aclothes-wearing man, a man whose trade, office, and existence consistsin the wearing of clothes. Every faculty of his soul, spirit, purse, and person is heroically consecrated to this one object, the wearing ofclothes wisely and well. ' Those are true words. They are, perhaps, theonly 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 theauthor'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 comesMonsieur Barbey D'Aurevilly, that gentle moqueur, drawling, with a waveof his hand, 'Les esprits qui ne voient pas les choses que par leur pluspetit côté, ont imaginé que le Dandysme était surtout l'art de la mise, une heureuse et audacieuse dictature en fait de toilette et d'éléganceextérieure. Très-certainement c'est cela aussi, mais c'est biend'avantage. Le Dandysme est toute une manière d'être et l'on n'estpas que par la côté matériellement visible. C'est une manière d'êtreentièrement composée de nuances, comme il arrive toujours dans lessociétés très-vieilles et très-civilisées. ' It is a pleasure to arguewith so suave a subtlist, and we say to him that this comprehensivedefinition does not please us. We say we think he errs. 

Not that Monsieur's analysis of the dandiacal mind is worthless by anymeans. Nor, when he declares that George Brummell was the supreme kingof the dandies and fut le dandysme même, can I but piously lay onehand upon the brim of my hat, the other upon my heart. But it is as anartist, and for his supremacy in the art of costume, and for all he didto gain the recognition of costume as in itself an art, and for thatsuperb 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 thatMonsieur D'Aurevilly, the biographer who, in many ways, does seem mostperfectly to have understood Mr. Brummell, should belittle to a merephase that which was indeed the very core of his existence. To analysethe temperament of a great artist and then to declare that his art wasbut 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, thatgunpowder is composed of potassium chloride (let me say), nitrateand power of explosion. Dandyism is ever the outcome of a carefullycultivated temperament, not part of the temperament itself. That manièred'être, entièrement composée de nuances, was not more, as the writerseems to have supposed, than attributory to Mr. Brummell's art. Nor isit even peculiar to dandies. All delicate spirits, to whatever art theyturn, even if they turn to no art, assume an oblique attitude towardslife. Of all dandies, Mr. Brummell did most steadfastly maintain thisattitude. Like the single-minded artist that he was, he turned full andsquare towards his art and looked life straight in the face out of thecorners of his eyes. 

It is not hard to see how, in the effort to give Mr. Brummell his dueplace in history, Monsieur D'Aurevilly came to grief. It is but strangethat he should have fallen into a rather obvious trap. Surely he shouldhave perceived that, so long as Civilisation compels her children towear clothes, the thoughtless multitude will never acknowledge dandyismto be an art. If considerations of modesty or hygiene compelled everyone to stain canvas or chip marble every morning, painting and sculpturewould in like manner be despised. Now, as these considerations do compelevery one to envelop himself in things made of cloth and linen, thiscommon duty is confounded with that fair procedure, elaborate of manythoughts, in whose accord the fop accomplishes his toilet, each morningafresh, Aurora speeding on to gild his mirror. Not until nudity bepopular will the art of costume be really acknowledged. Nor even thenwill it be approved. Communities are ever jealous (quite naturally) ofthe artist who works for his own pleasure, not for theirs--more jealousby far of him whose energy is spent only upon the glorification ofhimself alone. Carlyle speaks of dandyism as a survival of 'the primevalsuperstition, self-worship. ' 'La vanité, ' are almost the first words ofMonsieur D'Aurevilly, 'c'est un sentiment contre lequel tout le mondeest impitoyable. ' Few remember that the dandy's vanity is far differentfrom the crude conceit of the merely handsome man. Dandyism is, afterall, one of the decorative arts. A fine ground to work upon is its firstpostulate. And the dandy cares for his physical endowments only in sofar as they are susceptible of fine results. They are just so much tohim as to the decorative artist is inilluminate parchment, the form of awhite 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, 'Weare not fairly matched. If I were to wound him in the face it would notmatter; but if he were to wound me, ce serait vraiment dommage!' Therewe have a pure example of a dandy's peculiar vanity--'It would be a realpity!' They say that D'Orsay killed his man--no matter whom--in thisduel. He never should have gone out. Beau Brummell never risked hisdandyhood in these mean encounters. But D'Orsay was a wayward, excessivecreature, too fond of life and other follies to achieve real greatness. The power of his predecessor, the Father of Modern Costume, is over usyet. All that is left of D'Orsay's art is a waistcoat and a handful ofrings--vain relics of no more value for us than the fiddle of Paganinior the mask of Menischus! I think that in Carolo's painting of him, wecan see the strength, that was the weakness, of le jeune Cupidon. Hisfingers are closed upon his cane as upon a sword. There is mockery inthe 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. Sadthat one so prodigally endowed as he was, with the three essentials ofa dandy--physical distinction, a sense of beauty and wealth or, if youprefer the term, credit--should not have done greater things. Much ofhis costume was merely showy or eccentric, without the rotund unityof the perfect fop's. It had been well had he lacked that dash andspontaneous gallantry that make him cut, it may be, a more attractivefigure than Beau Brummell. The youth of St. James's gave him a wonderfulwelcome. The flight of Mr. Brummell had left them as sheep without ashepherd. They had even cried out against the inscrutable decreesof fashion and curtailed the height of their stocks. And (lo!) here, ambling down the Mall with tasselled cane, laughing in the window atWhités or in Fop's Alley posturing, here, with the devil in his eyesand all the graces at his elbow, was D'Orsay, the prince paramount whoshould dominate London and should guard life from monotony by the daringof his whims. He accepted so many engagements that he often dressed veryquickly both in the morning and at nightfall. His brilliant genius wouldsometimes enable him to appear faultless, but at other times not evenhis fine figure could quite dispel the shadow of a toilet too hastilyconceived. Before long he took that fatal step, his marriage with LadyHarriet Gardiner. The marriage, as we all know, was not a happy one, though the wedding was very pretty. It ruined the life of Lady Harrietand of her mother, the Blessington. It won the poor Count further stillfurther from his art and sent him spinning here, there, and everywhere. He was continually at Cleveden, or Belvoir, or Welbeck, laughing gailyas he brought down our English partridges, or at Crockford's, smilingas he swept up our English guineas from the board. Holker declaresthat, excepting Mr. Turner, he was the finest equestrian in London anddescribes how the mob would gather every morning round his door to seehim descend, insolent from his toilet, and mount and ride away. Indeed, he surpassed us all in all the exercises of the body. He even essayedpreëminence in the arts (as if his own art were insufficient to hisvitality!) and was for ever penning impenuous verses for circulationamong his friends. There was no great harm in this, perhaps. Even thehandwriting of Mr. Brummell was not unknown in the albums. But D'Orsay'spainting of portraits is inexcusable. The aesthetic vision of adandy should be bounded by his own mirror. A few crayon sketches ofhimself--dilectissimae imagines--are as much as he should ever do. ThatD'Orsay's portraits, even his much-approved portrait of the Duke ofWellington, are quite amateurish, is no excuse. It is the processof painting which is repellent; to force from little tubes of lead aglutinous flamboyance and to defile, with the hair of a camel thereinsteeped, taut canvas, is hardly the diversion for a gentleman; and tohave done all this for a man who was admittedly a field-marshal. .. . 

I have often thought that this selfish concentration, which is a partof dandyism, is also a symbol of that einsamkeit felt in greater or lessdegree by the practitioners of every art. But, curiously enough, thevery unity of his mind with the ground he works on exposes the dandy tothe influence of the world. In one way dandyism is the least selfishof 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 paintersare not so generous as Mr. Watts. But the dandy presents himself to thenation whenever he sallies from his front door. Princes and peasantsalike may gaze upon his masterpieces. Now, any art which is pursueddirectly under the eye of the public is always far more amenableto fashion than is an art with which the public is but vicariouslyconcerned. Those standards to which artists have gradually accustomed itthe public will not see lightly set at naught. Very rigid, for example, are the traditions of the theatre. If my brother were to declaim hislines at the Haymarket in the florotund manner of Macready, what a rowthere would be in the gallery! It is only by the impalpable process ofevolution that change comes to the theatre. Likewise in the sphereof costume no swift rebellion can succeed, as was exemplified by thePrincés 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--whoknows?--knee-breeches. It is only by the trifling addition orelimination, modification or extension, made by this or that dandy andcopied by the rest, that the mode proceeds. The young dandy will findcertain laws to which he must conform. If he outrage them he will behooted by the urchins of the street, not unjustly, for he will haveoutraged the slowly constructed laws of artists who have preceded him. Let him reflect that fashion is no bondage imposed by alien hands, butthe last wisdom of his own kind, and that true dandyism is the result ofan artistic temperament working upon a fine body within the wide limitsof fashion. Through this habit of conformity, which it inculcates, thearmy has given us nearly all our finest dandies, from Alcibiades toColonel Br*b*z*n de nos jours. Even Mr. Brummell, though he defied hisColonel, must have owed some of his success to the military spirit. Anyparent intending his son to be a dandy will do well to send him firstinto the army, there to learn humility, as did his archetype, Apollo, inthe house of Admetus. A sojourn at one of the Public Schools is also tobe commended. The University it were well to avoid. 

Of course, the dandy, like any other artist, has moments when his ownperiod, palling, inclines him to antique modes. A fellow-student oncetold me that, after a long vacation spent in touch with modern life, hehad hammered at the little gate of Merton and felt of a sudden his hatassume plumes and an expansive curl, the impress of a ruff about hisneck, 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 EarlyVictorian. Even savagery has charmed me. And at such times I have oftenwished I could find in my wardrobe suitable costumes. But these modishregrets are sterile, after all, and comprimend. What boots it to defythe conventions of our time? The dandy is the 'child of his age, 'and his best work must be produced in accord with the agés naturalinfluence. The true dandy must always love contemporary costume. In thisage, as in all precedent ages, it is only the tasteless who cavil, beingimpotent to win from it fair results. How futile their voices are!The costume of the nineteenth century, as shadowed for us first byMr. Brummell, so quiet, so reasonable, and, I say emphatically, sobeautiful; free from folly or affectation, yet susceptible to exquisiteordering; plastic, austere, economical, may not be ignored. I spoke ofthe doom of swift rebellions, but I doubt even if any soever gradualevolution will lead us astray from the general precepts of Mr. Brummell's code. At every step in the progress of democracy thoseprecepts will be strengthened. Every day their fashion is more secure, corroborate. They are acknowledged by the world. The barbarous costumesthat in bygone days were designed by class-hatred, or hatred of race, are dying, very surely dying. The costermonger with his pearl-emblazonedcoat has been driven even from that Variety Stage, whereon he soughta desperate sanctuary. The clinquant corslet of the Swiss girl justsurvives at bals costumés. I am told that the kilt is now confinedentirely to certain of the soldiery and to a small cult of ScotchArchaïcists. I have seen men flock from the boulevards of one capitaland from the avenues of another to be clad in Conduit Street. Eveninto Oxford, that curious little city, where nothing is ever born noranything ever quite dies, the force of the movement has penetrated, insomuch that tasselled cap and gown of degree are rarely seen in thestreets or colleges. In a place which was until recent times scarcelyless remote, Japan, the white and scarlet gardens are trod by men whoare shod in boots like our own, who walk--rather strangely still--inclose-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 mannerof real Europeans. 

It is very nice, this universal acquiescence in the dress we havedesigned, but, if we reflect, not wonderful. There are three apparentreasons, and one of them is aesthetic. So to clothe the body that itsfineness be revealed and its meanness veiled has been the aesthetic aimof all costume, but before our time the mean had never been struck. Theancient Romans went too far. Muffled in the ponderous folds of a toga, Adonis might pass for Punchinello, Punchinello for Adonis. The ancientBritons, on the other hand, did not go far enough. And so it had been inall ages down to that bright morning when Mr. Brummell, at his mirror, conceived the notion of trousers and simple coats. Clad according to hisconvention, the limbs of the weakling escape contempt, and the athleteis unobtrusive, and all is well. But there is also a social reason forthe triumph of our costume--the reason of economy. That austerity, whichhas 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 nicelydressed among his fellows. And lastly there is a reason of psychology, most potent of all, perhaps. Is not the costume of today, with itssubtlety and sombre restraint, its quiet congruities of black and whiteand grey, supremely apt a medium for the expression of modern emotionand modern thought? That aptness, even alone, would explain itstriumph. Let us be glad that we have so easy, yet so delicate, a mode ofexpression. 

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. Stillmore swift and obvious is its revelation of the work and the soul ofthose who dress, whether naturally or for effect, without reference toconvention. The bowler of Mr. Jerome K. Jerome is a perfect prefaceto all his works. The silk hat of Mr. Whistler is a real nocturne, hislinen a symphony en blanc majeur. To have seen Mr. Hall Caine is to haveread his soul. His flowing, formless cloak is as one of his own novels, twenty-five editions latent in the folds of it. Melodrama crouches uponthe brim of his sombrero. His tie is a Publisher's Announcement. Hisboots are Copyright. In his hand he holds the staff of The FamilyHerald. 

But the dandy, in no wise violating the laws of fashion, can make moresubtle symbols of his personality. More subtle these symbols are forthe very reason that they are effected within the restrictions which areessential to an art. Chastened of all flamboyance, they are from mostmen occult, obvious, it may be, only to other artists or even only tohim they symbolise. Nor will the dandy express merely a crude idea ofhis personality, as does, for example, Mr. Hall Caine, dressing himselfalways and exactly after one pattern. Every day as his mood has changedsince his last toilet, he will vary the colour, texture, form of hiscostume. Fashion does not rob him of free will. It leaves him liberty ofall expression. Every day there is not one accessory, from the butterflythat 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 thecoming day. 

On this, the psychological side of foppery, I know not one so expert ashim whom, not greatly caring for contemporary names, I will call Mr. LeV. No hero-worshipper am I, but I cannot write without enthusiasm ofhis simple life. He has not spurred his mind to the quest of shadowsnor vexed his soul in the worship of any gods. No woman has woundedhis heart, though he has gazed gallantly into the eyes of many women, intent, I fancy, upon his own miniature there. Nor is the incomparableset of his trousers spoilt by the perching of any dear little child uponhis knee. And so, now that he is stricken with seventy years, he knowsnone of the bitterness of eld, for his toilet-table is an imperishablealtar, 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 thatconcerns costume, and each morning come, themselves tentatively clad, towatch the perfect procedure of his toilet and learn invaluable lessons. I myself, a lie-a-bed, often steal out, foregoing the best hours of theday abed, that I may attend that levée. The rooms of the Master are inSt. James's Street, and perhaps it were well that I should give somelittle record of them and of the manner of their use. In the first roomthe 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, atlength, is enveloped in a dressing-gown of white wool. In the thirdroom is his breakfast upon a little table and his letters and somenewspapers. Leisurely he sips his chocolate, leisurely learns all thatneed be known. With a cigarette he allows his temper, as informed bythe news and the weather and what not, to develop itself for the day. At length, his mood suggests, imperceptibly, what colour, what form ofclothes he shall wear. He rings for his valet--'I will wear such andsuch a coat, such and such a tie; my trousers shall be of this or thattone; this or that jewel shall be radiant in the folds of my tie. ' It isgenerally near noon that he reaches the fourth room, the dressing-room. The uninitiate can hardly realise how impressive is the ceremonial thereenacted. 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 longbench, rapt in wonder, and, in the middle, now sitting, now standing, negligently, before a long mirror, with a valet at either elbow, Mr. LeV. , our cynosure. There is no haste, no faltering, when once the schemeof the day's toilet has been set. It is a calm toilet. A flower does notgrow more calmly. 

Any of us, any day, may see the gracious figure of Mr. Le V. , as hesaunters down the slope of St. James's. Long may the sun irradiate thesurface of his tilted hat! It is comfortable to know that, though hedie to-morrow the world will not lack a most elaborate record of hisfoppery. All his life he has kept or, rather, the current valetshave kept for him, a Journal de Toilette. Of this there are now fiftyvolumes, each covering the space of a year. Yes, fifty springs havefilled his button-hole with their violets; the snow of fifty winters hasbeen less white than his linen; his boots have outshone fifty sequencesof summer suns, and the colours of all those autumns have faded in thedry light of his apparel. The first page of each volume of the Journalde Toilette bears the signature of Mr. Le V. And of his two valets. Ofthe other pages each is given up, as in other diaries, to one day ofthe year. In ruled spaces are recorded there the cut and texture of thesuit, the colour of the tie, the form of jewellery that was worn on theday the page records. No detail is omitted and a separate space is setaside for 'Remarks. ' I remember that I once asked Mr. Le V. , halfin jest, what he should wear on the Judgment Day. Seriously, and (Ifancied) 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 shouldcertainly wear a light suit, with a white waistcoat and a flower, but Iam no saint, sir, no saint. .. . I shall probably wear black trousers ortrousers 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 forthe soul, there must be other heavens also, where the intellect and thebody shall be consummate. In both these heavens Mr. Le V. Will have hishierarchy. Of a life like his there can be no conclusion, really. Didnot even Matthew Arnold admit that conduct of a cane is three-fourths oflife?

Certainly Mr. Le V. Is a great artist, and his supremacy is in the tactwith which he suits his toilet to his temperament. But the marvellousaffinity of a dandy's mood to his daily toilet is not merely that itfinds therein its perfect echo nor that it may even be, in reflex, thereby accentuated or made less poignant. For some years I had feltconvinced that in a perfect dandy this affinity must reach a point, whenthe costume itself, planned with the finest sensibility, would changewith the emotional changes of its wearer, automatically. But I felt thathere was one of those boundaries, where the fields of art align with thefields of science, and I hardly dared to venture further. Moreover, the theory was not easy to verify. I knew that, except in some greatemotional crisis, the costume could not palpably change its aspect. Here was an impasse; for the perfect dandy--the Brummell, the Mr. LeV. --cannot afford to indulge in any great emotion outside his art; likeBalzac, he has not time. The gods were good to me, however. One morningnear the end of last July, they decreed that I should pass through HalfMoon Street and meet there a friend who should ask me to go with him tohis club and watch for the results of the racing at Goodwood. This clubincludes hardly any member who is not a devotee of the Turf, so that, when we entered it, the cloak-room displayed long rows of unburdenedpegs--save where one hat shone. None but that illustrious dandy, LordX. , 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 ribandsof the tape-machine. I sat at a little distance, watching him. Tworesults 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 thenturn deadly pale. I looked again and saw that his boots had lost theirlustre. Drawing nearer, I found that grey hairs had begun to showthemselves in his raven coat. It was very painful and yet, to me, verygratifying. 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-bluesurface 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. Thoughshort, even insignificant, in stature and with an obvious tendency to beobese, he had that unruffled, Olympian air, which is so sure a signof 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 beenversed in the Almanach de Gotha, a trifle older than he is. He did notraise his hat in answer to my salute, but smiled most graciously andmade as though he would extend his hand to me, mistaking me, I doubtnot, for one of his friends. Forthwith, a member of his suite saidsomething to him in an undertone, whereat he smiled again and took nofurther notice of me. 

I do not wonder the people idolise him. His almost blameless life hasbeen passed among them, nothing in it hidden from their knowledge. Whenthey look upon his dear presentment in the photographer's window--theshrewd, kindly eyes under the high forehead, the sparse locks socarefully distributed--words of loyalty only and of admiration rise totheir lips. For of all princes in modern days he seems to fulfil mostperfectly the obligation of princely rank. Nêpios he might have beencalled in the heroic age, when princes were judged according to theirmastery of the sword or of the bow, or have seemed, to those mediaevaleyes 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 shouldlive among us, be often manifest to our eyes, set a perpetual example ofa right life. We bid them be the ornaments of our State. Too oftenthey do not attain to our ideal. They give, it may be, a half-hearteddevotion to soldiering, or pursue pleasure merely--tales of theirfrivolity raising now and again the anger of a public swift to envy themtheir temptations. But against this admirable Prince no such charges canbe 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 heprefers the society of ladies, not one breath of scandal has ever tingedhis name. Of how many English princes could this be said, in days whenFigaro, quill in hand, inclines his ear to every key-hole?

Upon the one action that were well obliterated from his record I neednot long insist. It seems that the wife of an aged ex-Premier came tohave an audience and pay her respects. Hardly had she spoken when thePrince, in a fit of unreasoning displeasure, struck her a violent blowwith his clenched fist. Had His Royal Highness not always stood so faraloof from political contention, it had been easier to find a motive forthis unmannerly blow. The incident is deplorable, but it belongs, after all, to an earlier period of his life; and, were it not that noappreciation must rest upon the suppression of any scandal, I should nothave referred to it. For the rest, I find no stain, soever faint, uponhis life. The simplicity of his tastes is the more admirable for that heis 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 ofracers has he indulged, preferring to the finest blood-horse ever bred acertain white and woolly lamb with a blue riband to its neck. This heis never tired of fondling. It is with him, like the roebuck of HenriQuatre, wherever he goes. 

Suave and simple his life is! Narrow in range, it may be, but with everyroyal appurtenance of delight, for to him Lovés happy favours are givenand the tribute of glad homage, always, here and there and every otherwhere. Round the flower-garden at Sandringham runs an old wall of redbrick, streaked with ivy and topped infrequently with balls of stone. By its iron gates, that open to a vista of flowers, stand two kindpolicemen, guarding the Princés procedure along that bright vista. As his perambulator rolls out of the gate of St. James's Palace, hestretches out his tiny hands to the scarlet sentinels. An obsequiousretinue follows him over the lawns of the White Lodge, cooing andlaughing, blowing kisses and praising him. Yet do not imagine his lifehas been all gaiety! The afflictions that befall royal personages alwaystouch very poignantly the heart of the people, and it is not too much tosay that all England watched by the cradle-side of Prince Edward in thatdolorous hour, when first the little battlements rose about the rose-redroof of his mouth. I am glad to think that not one querulous word didHis Royal Highness, in his great agony, utter. They only say that hisloud, incessant cries bore testimony to the perfect lungs for which theHouse of Hanover is most justly famed. Irreiterate be the horror of thatepoch!

As yet, when we know not even what his first words will be, it is tooearly to predict what verdict posterity will pass upon him. Already hehas won the hearts of the people; but, in the years which, it is to behoped, still await him, he may accomplish more. Attendons! He standsalone 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 historiansrepeat one another. ' Now, there are still some periods with which nohistorian has grappled, and, strangely enough, the period that mostgreatly fascinates me is one of them. The labour I set myself istherefore rather Herculean. But it is also, for me, so far a labour oflove that I can quite forget or even revel in its great difficulty. Iwould love to have lived in those bygone days, when first society wasinducted into the mysteries of art and, not losing yet its old andelegant tenue, babbled of blue china and white lilies, of the painterRossetti and the poet Swinburne. It would be a splendid thing to haveseen the tableaux at Cromwell House or to have made my way through theFancy Fair and bartered all for a cigarette from a shepherdess; to havewalked in the Park, straining my eyes for a glimpse of the JerseyLily; 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 thisperiod is now so remote from us that much in it is nearly impossible tounderstand, more than a little must be left in the mists of antiquitythat involve it. The memoirs of the day are, indeed, many, but notexactly illuminative. From such writers as Frith, Montague Williams orthe Bancrofts, you may gain but little peculiar knowledge. That quaintold chronicler, Lucy, dilates amusingly enough upon the frown of SirRichard (afterwards Lord) Cross or the tea-rose in the Prime Minister'sbutton-hole. But what can he tell us of the negotiations that ledGladstone back to public life or of the secret councils of the FourthParty, whereby Sir Stafford was gradually eclipsed? Good memoirs mustever be the cumulation of gossip. Gossip (alas!) has been killed by thePress. In the tavern or the barber's-shop, all secrets passed into everyear. From newspapers how little can be culled! Manifestations are theremade manifest to us and we are taught, with tedious iteration, thethings we knew, and need not have known, before. In my research, I havehad only such poor guides as Punch, or the London Charivari and TheQueen, the Lady's Newspaper. Excavation, which in the East has beenproductive of rich material for the archaeologist, was indeed suggestedto me. I was told that, just before Cleopatra's Needle was set upon theEmbankment, an iron box, containing a photograph of Mrs. Langtry, some current coins and other trifles of the time, was dropped into thefoundation. I am sure much might be done with a spade, here and there, in the neighbourhood of old Cromwell House. Accursed be the obduracyof vestries! Be not I, but they, blamed for any error, obscurity oromission in my brief excursus. 

The period of 1880 and of the two successive years should ever bememorable, for it marks a great change in the constitution of Englishsociety. It would seem that, under the quiet régime of the Tory Cabinet, the upper ten thousand (as they were quaintly called in those days, ) hadtaken a somewhat more frigid tone. The Prince of Wales had inclined tobe restful after the revels of his youth. The prolonged seclusionof Queen Victoria, who was then engaged upon that superb work ofintrospection and self-analysis, More Leaves from the Highlands, hadbegun to tell upon the social system. Balls and other festivities, bothat Court and in the houses of the nobles, were notably fewer. The vogueof the Opera was passing. Even in the top of the season, Rotten Row, Iread, was not impenetrably crowded. But in 1880 came the tragic fall ofDisraeli and the triumph of the Whigs. How great a change came thenupon Westminster must be known to any one who has studied the annals ofGladstonés incomparable Parliament. Gladstone himself, with a monstrousmajority behind him, revelling in the old splendour of speech that notseventy summers nor six years' sulking had made less; Parnell, deadly, mysterious, with his crew of wordy peasants that were to set all Saxonthings at naught--the activity of these two men alone would have madethis Parliament supremely stimulating throughout the land. What of youngRandolph Churchill, who, despite his halting speech, foppish mien andrather coarse fibre of mind, was yet the greatest Parliamentarian of hisday? What of Justin Huntly McCarthy, under his puerile mask a most dark, most dangerous conspirator, who, lightly swinging the sacred lamp ofburlesque, irradiated with fearful clarity the wrath and sorrow ofIreland? What of Blocker Warton? What of the eloquent atheist, CharlesBradlaugh, pleading at the Bar, striding past the furious Tories tothe very Mace, hustled down the stone steps with the broadcloth torn inribands from his back? Surely such scenes will never more be witnessedat St. Stephen's. Imagine the existence of God being made a partyquestion! No wonder that at a time of such turbulence fine society alsoshould have shown the primordia of a great change. It was felt thatthe aristocracy could not live by good-breeding alone. The old delightsseemed vapid, waxen. Something vivid was desired. And so the sphere offashion converged with the sphere of art, and revolution was the result. 

Be it remembered that long before this time there had been in the heartof Chelsea a kind of cult for Beauty. Certain artists had settledthere, deliberately refusing to work in the ordinary official way, and'wrought, ' as they were wont to asseverate, 'for the pleasure and sakeof 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 andunbeknown, callous of all but their craft, they wrought their poemsor their pictures, gave them one to another, and wrought on. Meredith, Rossetti, Swinburne, Morris, Holman Hunt were in this band of shyartificers. In fact, Beauty had existed long before 1880. It was Mr. Oscar Wilde who managed her début. To study the period is to admit thatto him was due no small part of the social vogue that Beauty began toenjoy. Fired by his fervid words, men and women hurled their mahoganyinto the streets and ransacked the curio-shops for the furniture ofAnnish days. Dados arose upon every wall, sunflowers and the feathersof peacocks curved in every corner, tea grew quite cold while the guestswere praising the Willow Pattern of its cup. A few fashionable womeneven dressed themselves in sinuous draperies and unheard-of greens. Intowhatsoever ballroom you went, you would surely find, among the women intiaras and the fops and the distinguished foreigners, half a score ofcomely ragamuffins in velveteen, murmuring sonnets, posturing, wavingtheir hands. Beauty was sought in the most unlikely places. Youngpainters found her mobled in the fogs, and bank-clerks, versed in thewritings of Mr. Hamerton, were heard to declare, as they sped home fromthe City, that the Underground Railway was beautiful from London Bridgeto Westminster, but not from Sloane Square to Notting Hill Gate. 

Aestheticism (for so they named the movement, ) did indeed permeate, ina manner, all classes. But it was to the haut monde that its primaryappeal was made. The sacred emblems of Chelsea were sold in thefashionable toy-shops, its reverently chanted creeds became the patterof the boudoirs. The old Grosvenor Gallery, that stronghold of the few, was verily invaded. Never was such a fusion of delightful folk as at itsPrivate Views. There was Robert Browning, the philosopher, doffing hishat with a courtly sweep to more than one Duchess. There, too, wasTheo Marzials, poet and eccentric, and Charles Colnaghi, the hero of ahundred tea-fights, and young Brookfield, the comedian, and many anothergood fellow. My Lord of Dudley, the virtuoso, came there, leaningfor support upon the arm of his fair young wife. Disraeli, with hislustreless eyes and face like some seamed Hebraic parchment, came also, and whispered behind his hand to the faithful Corry. And Walter Sickertspread the latest mot of 'the Master, ' who, with monocle, cane andtilted hat, flashed through the gay mob anon. 

Autrement, there was Coombe Wood, in whose shade the Lady ArchibaldCampbell suffered more than one of Shakespearés 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 herold charm. All Fashion came to marvel and so did all the Aesthetes, inthe heart of one of whose leaders, Godwin, that superb architect, theidea was first conceived. Real Pastoral Plays! Lest the invited guestsshould get any noxious scent of the footlights across the grass, onlyamateurs were accorded parts. They roved through a real wood, thesejerkined amateurs, with the poet's music upon their lips. Never undersuch dark and griddled elms had the outlaws feasted upon their venison. Never had any Rosalind traced with such shy wonder the writing of herlover upon the bark, nor any Orlando won such laughter for his notreally sportive dalliance. Fairer than the mummers, it may be, were theladies who sat and watched them from the lawn. All of them wore jerseysand tied-back skirts. Zulu hats shaded their eyes from the sun. Banglesshimmered upon their wrists. And the gentlemen wore light frock-coatsand light top-hats with black bands. And the aesthetes were invelveteen, carrying lilies. 

Not that Art and Fashion shunned the theatre. They began in 1880 toaffect it as never before. The one invaded Irving's premières at theLyceum. The other sang paeans in praise of the Bancrofts. The Frenchplays, too, were the feigned delight of all the modish world. Not tohave seen Chaumont in Totot chez Tata was held a solecism. The homelymesdames and messieurs from the Parisian boards were 'lionised' (howstrangely that phrase rings to modern ears!) in ducal drawing-rooms. In fact, all the old prejudice of rank was being swept away. Even moresignificant than the reception of players was a certain effort, made atthis time, to raise the average of aristocratic loveliness--an effortthat, but a few years before, would have been surely scouted asquite undignified and outrageous. What the term 'Professional Beauty'signified, how any lady gained a right to it, we do not and may neverknow. It is certain, however, that there were many ladies of tone, uponwhom it was bestowed. They received special attention from the Prince ofWales, and hostesses would move heaven and earth to have them in theirrooms. 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 (afterwardsLady 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, steppingacross an artificial brook, in the pink kirtle of Effie Deans. We maydoubt whether the movement, represented by these ladies, was quite inaccord with the dignity and elegance that always should mark the bestsociety. Any effort to make Beauty compulsory robs Beauty of its chiefcharm. But, at the same time, I do believe that this movement, so far asit was informed by a real wish to raise a practical standard of femininecharm for all classes, does not deserve the strictures that have beenpassed upon it by posterity. One of its immediate sequels was theincursion of American ladies into London. Then it was that these prettycreatures, 'clad in Worth's most elegant confections, ' drawled their waythrough our greater portals. Fanned, as they were, by the feathers ofthe Prince of Wales, they had a great success, and they were so strangethat their voices and their dresses were mimicked partout. The Englishbeauties were rather angry, especially with the Prince, whom alone theyblamed for the vogue of their rivals. History credits His Royal Highnesswith many notable achievements. Not the least of these is that hediscovered the inhabitants of America. 

It will be seen that in this renaissance the keenest students of theexquisite were women. Nevertheless, men were not idle, neither. Sincethe day of Mr. Brummell and King George, the noble art of self-adornmenthad fallen partially desuete. Great fops like Bulwer and le jeuneCupidon had come upon the town, but never had they formed a school. Dress, therefore, had become simpler, wardrobes smaller, fashions apt tolinger. In 1880 arose the sect that was soon to win for itself the titleof 'The Mashers. ' What this title exactly signified I suppose no twoetymologists will ever agree. But we can learn clearly enough, from thefashion-plates of the day, what the Mashers were in outward semblance;from the lampoons, their mode of life. Unlike the dandies ofthe Georgian era, they pretended to no classic taste and, whollycontemptuous 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 heldthem never, but nightly they gathered at the Gaiety Theatre. Nightlythe stalls were agog with small, sleek heads surmounting collars ofinterminable height. Nightly, in the foyer, were lisped the praises ofKate Vaughan, her graceful dancing, or of Nellie Farren, her matchlessfooling. Never a night passed but the dreary stage-door was cinct with acirclet of fools bearing bright bouquets, of flaxen-headed fools whohad feet like black needles, and graceful fools incumbent upon canes. A strange cult! I once knew a lady whose father was actually present atthe first night of 'The Forty Thieves, ' and fell enamoured of one of thecoryphées. By such links is one age joined to another. 

There is always something rather absurd about the past. For us, who havefared on, the silhouette of Error is sharp upon the past horizon. Aswe look back upon any period, its fashions seem grotesque, its idealsshallow, for we know how soon those ideals and those fashions were toperish, and how rightly; nor can we feel a little of the fervour theydid inspire. It is easy to laugh at these Mashers, with their fantasticraiment and languid lives, or at the strife of the ProfessionalBeauties. It is easy to laugh at all that ensued when first the mummersand the stainers of canvas strayed into Mayfair. Yet shall I laugh? Forme the most romantic moment of a pantomime is always when the winged andwired fairies begin to fade away, and, as they fade, clown and pantaloontumble on joppling and grimacing, seen very faintly in that indecisivetwilight. 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 beneathits spell that I have tended, now and again, to overrate its realimport. I lay no claim to the true historical spirit. I fancy it was achalk drawing of a girl in a mob-cap, signed 'Frank Miles, 1880, 'that first impelled me to research. To give an accurate and exhaustiveaccount 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 itsmore strictly sentimental aspects, I may have lightened the task of thescientific historian. And I look to Professor Gardiner and to the Bishopof Oxford. 

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

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

'Jersey Lily. ' A fanciful title bestowed, at this time, upon thebeautiful 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, fora while, by its novelty, but soon reverted to the more sprightlydeux-temps. 

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

'There were quaint, beautiful, extraordinary costumes walkingabout--ultra-aesthetics, artistic-aesthetics, aesthetics that madeup their minds to be daring, and suddenly gave way in some importantpoint--put a frivolous bonnet on the top of a grave and flowinggarment that Albert Durer might have designed for a mantle. There werefashionable costumes that Mrs. Mason or Madame Eliot might have turnedout that morning. The motley crowd mingled, forming into groups, sometimes dazzling you by the array of colours that you never thoughtto see in full daylight. .. . Canary-coloured garments flitted cheerilyby garments of the saddest green. A hat in an agony of pushes and angleswas seen in company with a bonnet that was a gay garland of flowers. Avast cape that might have enshrouded the form of a Mater Dolorosa hungby the side of a jauntily-striped Langtry-hood. '

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

'Masher. ' One authority derives the title, rather ingeniously, from 'MaChère, ' the mode of address used by the gilded youth to the barmaids ofthe period--whence the corruption, 'Masher. ' Another traces it tothe chorus of a song, which, at that time, had a great vogue in themusic-halls: 'I'm the slashing, dashing, mashing Montmorency of theday. ' 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 forhis recovery, composed by one of the Archbishops, was read aloud to himand that His Majesty, after saying Amen 'thrice, with great fervour, 'begged that his thanks might be conveyed to its author. To the studentof royalty in modern times there is something rather suggestive in thisincident. I like to think of the drug-scented room at Windsor and of theKing, livid and immobile among his pillows, waiting, in superstitiousawe, for the near moment when he must stand, a spirit, in the presenceof a perpetual King. I like to think of him following the futile prayerwith eyes and lips, and then, custom resurgent in him and a touch ofpride 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 andadmirable taste of the Prelate should receive a suitable acknowledgment. It would have been impossible for a real monarch like George, even afterthe gout had turned his thoughts heavenward, really to abase himselfbefore his Maker. But he could, so to say, treat with Him, as he mighthave treated with a fellow-sovereign, in a formal way, long afterdiplomacy was quite useless. How strange it must be to be a king! Howdelicate 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. Thehundred and one eulogies and lampoons, irresponsibly published duringand immediately after his reign, are not worth a wooden hoop in Hades. Mr. Percy Fitzgerald has published a history of Georgés reign, in whichhe has so artistically subordinated his own personality to his subject, that I can scarcely find, from beginning to end of the two bulkyvolumes, a single opinion expressed, a single idea, a single deductionfrom the admirably-ordered facts. All that most of us know of Georgeis from Thackeray's brilliant denunciation. Now, I yield to few in myadmiration of Thackeray's powers. He had a charming style. We neverfind 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 Croissetor in the quadrangle at Brasenose, how he would have laughed! He blew onhis pipe, and words came tripping round him, like children, like prettylittle children who are perfectly drilled for the dance, or came, did hewill it, treading in their precedence, like kings, gloomily. And I thinkit is to the credit of the reading mob that, by reason of his beautifulstyle, all that he said was taken for the truth, without questioning. But truth after all is eternal, and style transient, and now thatThackeray's style is becoming, if I may say so, a trifle 1860, it maynot be amiss that we should inquire whether his estimate of George is insubstance and fact worth anything at all. It seems to me that, as in hisnovels, so in his history of the four Georges, Thackeray made no attemptat psychology. He dealt simply with types. One George he insisted uponregarding as a buffoon, another as a yokel. The Fourth George he choseto hold up for reprobation as a drunken, vapid cad. Every action, everyphase of his life that went to disprove this view, he either suppressedor distorted utterly. 'History, ' he would seem to have chuckled, 'hasnothing to do with the First Gentleman. But I will give him a niche inNatural History. He shall be King of the Beasts. ' He made no allowancefor the extraordinary conditions under which all monarchs live, none forthe unfortunate circumstances by which George, especially, was from thefirst hampered. He judged him as he judged Barnes Newcome and all thescoundrels lie created. Moreover, he judged him by the moral standard ofthe 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 takenhim at his word. I feel that my essay may be scouted as a paradox; butI hope that many may recognise that I am not, out of mere boredom, endeavouring to stop my ears against popular platitude, but rather, ina spirit of real earnestness, to point out to the mob how it has beencruel to George. I do not despair of success. I think I shall makeconverts. The mob is really very fickle and sometimes cheers the truth. 

None, at all events, will deny that England stands to-day otherwisethan 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 areprating of progress, we are really so deteriorate! There is nothing butfeebleness in us. Our youths, who spend their days in trying to buildup their constitutions by sport or athletics and their evenings inundermining them with poisonous and dyed drinks; our daughters, who areever searching for some new quack remedy for new imaginary megrim, whatstrength is there in them? We have our societies for the prevention ofthis and the promotion of that and the propagation of the other, because there are no individuals among us. Our sexes are already nearlyassimilate. Women are becoming nearly as rare as ladies, and it is onlyat the music-halls that we are privileged to see strong men. We are borninto a poor, weak age. We are not strong enough to be wicked, and theNonconformist Conscience makes cowards of us all. 

But this was not so in the days when George was walking by his tutor'sside in the gardens of Kew or of Windsor. London must have been asplendid place in those days--full of life and colour and wrong andrevelry. There was no absurd press nor vestry to protect the poor at theexpense 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 wouldsay, womanly. In those days, a young man of wealth and family foundopen to him a vista of such licence as had been unknown to any sincethe barbatuli of the Roman Empire. To spend the early morning with hisvalet, gradually assuming the rich apparel that was not then tabooedby a hard sumptuary standard; to saunter round to Whités for ale andtittle-tattle and the making of wagers; to attend a 'drunken déjeuner'in honour of 'la très belle Rosaliné or the Strappini; to drive somefellow-fool far out into the country in his pretty curricle, 'followedby two well-dressed and well-mounted grooms, of singular elegancecertainly, ' and stop at every tavern on the road to curse the host fornot keeping better ale and a wench of more charm; to reach St. James'sin time for a random toilet and so off to dinner. Which of our dandiescould 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 supin the rotunda there? Yet the youth of that period would not dreamof going to bed or ever he had looked in at Crockford's--tanta lubidorerum--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 inBuckingham House. How his young eyes must have sparkled, and with whatglad gasps must he have taken the air of freedom into his lungs!Rumour had long been busy with the damned surveillance under which hischildhood had been passed. A paper of the time says significantly that'the Prince of Wales, with a spirit which does him honour, has threetimes requested a change in that system. ' King George had long postponedpermission for his son to appear at any balls, and the year before hadonly given it, lest he should offend the Spanish Minister, who beggedit as a personal favour. I know few pictures more pathetic than that ofGeorge, then an overgrown boy of fourteen, tearing the childish frillfrom around his neck and crying to one of the Royal servants, 'See howthey treat me! 'Childhood has always seemed to me the tragic period oflife. To be subject to the most odious espionage at the one age when younever dream of doing wrong, to be deceived by your parents, thwarted ofyour smallest wish, oppressed by the terrors of manhood and of the worldto come, and to believe, as you are told, that childhood is the onlyhappiness known; all this is quite terrible. And all Royal children, of whom I have read, particularly George, seem to have passed throughgreater trials in childhood than do the children of any other class. Mr. Fitzgerald, hazarding for once an opinion, thinks that 'thestupid, odious, German, sergeant-system of discipline that had been sorigorously applied was, in fact, responsible for the blemishes of theyoung Princés character. ' Even Thackeray, in his essay upon George III. , asks what wonder that the son, finding himself free at last, should haveplunged, without looking, into the vortex of dissipation. In Torrens'Life of Lord Melbourne we learn that Lord Essex, riding one day with theKing, met the young Prince wearing a wig, and that the culprit, beingsternly reprimanded by his father, replied that he had 'been orderedby his doctor to wear a wig, for he was subject to cold. ' Whereupon theKing, to vent the aversion he already felt for his son, or, it may havebeen, glorying in the satisfactory result of his discipline, turned toLord Essex and remarked, 'A lie is ever ready when it is wanted. ' Georgenever lost this early-ingrained habit of lies. It is to Georgés childishfear of his guardians that we must trace that extraordinary powerof bamboozling his courtiers, his ministry, and his mistresses thatdistinguished him through his long life. It is characteristic of the manthat he should himself have bitterly deplored his own untruthfulness. When, in after years, he was consulting Lady Spencer upon the choice ofa 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 andmy brothers don't, and I find it a great defect, from which I would havemy daughter free. We have been brought up badly, the Queen having taughtus to equivocate. ' You may laugh at the picture of the little chubby, curly-headed fellows learning to equivocate at their mother's knee, butpray remember that the wisest master of ethics himself, in his theoryof hexeis apodeiktikai, similarly raised virtues, such as telling thetruth, to the level of regular accomplishments, and, before you judgepoor George harshly in his entanglements of lying, think of the cruellyunwise education he had undergone. 

However much we may deplore this exaggerated tyranny, by reason ofits evil effect upon his moral nature, we cannot but feel glad that itexisted, to afford a piquant contrast to the life awaiting him. Had hepassed through the callow dissipations of Eton and Oxford, like otheryoung men of his age, he would assuredly have lacked much of thatsplendid, 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 allthe women fell at his feet? 'The graces of his person, ' says one whom hehonoured by an intrigue, 'the irresistible sweetness of his smile, thetenderness of his melodious, yet manly voice, will be remembered by metill every vision of this changing scene are forgotten. The polishedand fascinating ingenuousness of his manners contributed not a littleto enliven our promenade. He sang with exquisite taste, and the tones ofhis voice, breaking on the silence of the night, have often appearedto my entranced senses like more than mortal melody. ' But besides hisgraces of person, he had a most delightful wit, he was a scholar whocould bandy quotations with Fox or Sheridan, and, like the young menof to-day, he knew all about Art. He spoke French, Italian, and Germanperfectly. Crossdill had taught him the violoncello. At first, as wasright for one of his age, he cared more for the pleasures of the tableand of the ring, for cards and love. He was wont to go down to Ranelaghsurrounded by a retinue of bruisers--rapscallions, such as used tofollow Clodius through the streets of Rome--and he loved to join in thescuffles like any commoner. Pugilism he learnt from Angelo, and he wasconsidered by some to be a fine performer. On one occasion, too, at anexposition d'escrime, when he handled the foils against the maître, he'was highly complimented upon his graceful postures. ' In fact, despiteall his accomplishments, he seems to have been a thoroughly manly youngfellow. He was just the kind of figure-head Society had long been inneed of. A certain lack of tone had crept into the amusements of thehaut monde, due, doubtless, to the lack of an acknowledged leader. TheKing was not yet mad, but he was always bucolic, and socially out of thequestion. 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 theseentertainments great ladies and courtesans brushed beautiful shouldersin utmost familiarity, but those who delighted in the high charm ofsociety probably shook their heads. We need not, however, find it a flawin Georgés social bearing that he did not check this kind of freedom. Atthe first, as a young man full of life, of course he took everything asit came, joyfully. No one knew better than he did, in later life, thatthere is a time for laughing with great ladies and a time for laughingwith courtesans. But as yet it was not possible for him to exertinfluence. How great that influence became I will suggest hereafter. 

I like to think of him as he was at this period, charging about, inpursuit of pleasure, like a young bull. The splendid taste for buildinghad not yet come to him. His father would not hear of him patronisingthe Turf. But already he was implected with a passion for dress andseems to have erred somewhat on the side of dressing up, as is the wayof young men. It is fearful to think of him, as Cyrus Redding sawhim, 'arrayed in deep-brown velvet, silver embroidered, with cut-steelbuttons, and a gold net thrown over all. ' Before that 'gold net thrownover all, ' all the mistakes of his afterlife seem to me to grow almostinsignificant. Time, however, toned his too florid sense of costume, andwe should at any rate be thankful that his imagination never desertedhim. All the delightful munditiae that we find in the contemporary'fashion-plates for gentlemen' can be traced to George himself. Hiswere the much-approved 'quadruple stock of great dimension, ' the 'cockedgrey-beaver, ' 'the pantaloons of mauve silk negligently crinkled' andany number of other little pomps and foibles of the kind. As he grewolder and was obliged to abandon many of his more vigorous pastimes, hegrew more and more enamoured of the pleasures of the wardrobe. He wouldspend hours, it is said, in designing coats for his friends, liveriesfor his servants, and even uniforms. Nor did he ever make the mistake ofgiving away outmoded clothes to his valets, but kept them to form whatmust have been the finest collection of clothes that has been seen inmodern times. With a sentimentality that is characteristic of him, hewould often, as he sat, crippled by gout, in his room at Windsor, directhis servant to bring him this or that coat, which he had worn ten ortwenty or thirty years before, and, when it was brought to him, spendmuch time in laughing or sobbing over the memories that lay in itsfolds. It is pleasant to know that George, during his long and variouslife, never forgot a coat, however long ago worn, however seldom. 

But in the early days of which I speak he had not yet touched thatself-conscious note which, in manner and mode of life, as well as incostume, he was to touch later. He was too violently enamoured of allaround him, to think very deeply of himself. But he had already realisedthe tragedy of the voluptuary, which is, after a little time, not thathe 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 theperfection of railways, and it is possible for our good Prince, whomHeaven bless, to waken to the sound of the Braemar bagpipes, while themusic of Mdlle. Guilbert's latest song, cooed over the footlights ofthe Concerts Parisiens, still rings in his ears. But in the time of ourPrincés illustrious great-uncle there were not railways; and we findGeorge perpetually driving, for wagers, to Brighton and back (he hadalready acquired that taste for Brighton which was one of his mostloveable qualities) in incredibly short periods of time. The rusticswho lived along the road were well accustomed to the sight of a high, tremulous phaeton flashing past them, and the crimson face of theyoung Prince bending over the horses. There is something absurd inrepresenting George as, even before he came of age, a hardened andcynical profligate, an Elagabalus in trousers. His blood flowed fastenough through his veins. All his escapades were those of a healthfulyoung man of the time. Need we blame him if he sought, every day, tolive faster and more fully?

In a brief essay like this, I cannot attempt to write, as I hope one dayto do, in any detail a history of Georgés career, during the time whenhe was successively Prince of Wales and Regent and King. Merely is it mywish at present to examine some of the principal accusations that havebeen brought against him, and to point out in what ways he has beenharshly and hastily judged. Perhaps the greatest indignation againsthim was, and is to this day, felt by reason of his treatment of his twowives, Mrs. Fitzherbert and Queen Caroline. There are some scandals thatnever grow old, and I think the story of Georgés married life is one ofthem. It was a real scandal. I can feel it. It has vitality. Often haveI wondered whether the blood with which the young Princés shirt wassaturate when Mrs. Fitzherbert was first induced to visit him at CarltonHouse, was merely red paint, or if, in a frenzy of love, he had trulygashed himself with a razor. Certain it is that his passion for thevirtuous and obdurate lady was a very real one. Lord Holland describeshow the Prince used to visit Mrs. Fox, and there indulge in 'the mostextravagant expressions and actions--rolling on the floor, striking hisforehead, tearing his hair, falling into hysterics, and swearing that hewould abandon the country, forego the crown, &c. ' He was indeed stilla child, for Royalties, not being ever brought into contact with therealities of life, remain young far longer than other people. Cursedwith a truly royal lack of self-control, he was unable to bear theidea of being thwarted in any wish. Every day he sent off couriers toHolland, whither Mrs. Fitzherbert had retreated, imploring her to returnto him, offering her formal marriage. At length, as we know, she yieldedto his importunity and returned. It is difficult indeed to realiseexactly what was Mrs. Fitzherbert's feeling in the matter. The marriagemust be, as she knew, illegal, and would lead, as Charles James Foxpointed out in his powerful letter to the Prince, to endless andintricate difficulties. For the present she could only live with him ashis mistress. If, when he reached the legal age of twenty-five, he wereto apply to Parliament for permission to marry her, how could permissionbe given, when she had been living with him irregularly? Doubtless, shewas flattered by the attentions of the Heir to the Throne, but, had shereally returned his passion, she would surely have preferred 'any otherspecies of connection with His Royal Highness to one leading to so muchmisery and mischief. ' Really to understand her marriage, one must lookat the portraits of her that are extant. That beautiful and silly faceexplains much. One can well fancy such a lady being pleased to liveafter the performance of a mock-ceremony with a prince for whom she feltno 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 hismistress. Society, however, once satisfied that a ceremony of some kindhad been enacted, never regarded her as anything but his wife. The dayafter Fox, inspired by the Prince, had formally denied that any ceremonyhad taken place, 'the knocker of her door, ' to quote her own complacentphrase, 'was never still. ' The Duchesses of Portland, Devonshire andCumber-land were among her visitors. 

How much pop-limbo has been talked about the Princés denial of themarriage! I grant that it was highly improper to marry Mrs. Fitzherbertat all. But George was always weak and wayward, and he did, in his greatpassion, marry her. That he should afterwards deny it officially seemsto me to have been utterly inevitable. His denial did her not thefaintest damage, as I have pointed out. It was, so to speak, an officialquibble, rendered necessary by the circumstances of the case. Not tohave denied the marriage in the House of Commons would have meant ruinto both of them. As months passed, more serious difficulties awaited theunhappily wedded pair. What boots it to repeat the story of the Princésgreat debts and desperation? It was clear that there was but one wayof getting his head above water, and that was to yield to his father'swishes and contract a real marriage with a foreign princess. Fate wasdogging his footsteps relentlessly. Placed as he was, George could notbut offer to marry as his father willed. It is well, also, to rememberthat George was not ruthlessly and suddenly turning his shoulder uponMrs. Fitzherbert. For some time before the British plenipotentiary wentto fetch him a bride from over the waters, his name had been associatedwith 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! Surelywe should not judge a prince harshly. 'Princess Caroline very gaucheat cards, ' 'Princess Caroline very missish at supper, ' are among theentries made in his diary by Lord Malmesbury, while he was at the littleGerman Court. I can conceive no scene more tragic than that of herpresentation to the Prince, as related by the same nobleman. 'I, according to the established etiquette, ' so he writes, 'introducedthe Princess Caroline to him. She, very properly, in consequence of mysaying 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 callingto me, said: 'Harris, I am not well: pray get me a glass of brandy. ' Atdinner that evening, in the presence of her betrothed, the Princesswas 'flippant, rattling, affecting wit. ' Poor George, I say again!Deportment was his ruling passion, and his bride did not know how tobehave. Vulgarity--hard, implacable, German vulgarity--was in everythingshe did to the very day of her death. The marriage was solemnised onWednesday, April 8th, 1795, and the royal bridegroom was drunk. 

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

For my own part, I fancy Caroline was innocent of any infidelity to herunhappy husband. But that is neither here nor there. Her behaviour wascertainly not above suspicion. It fully justified George in trying toestablish a case for her divorce. When, at length, she went abroad, hervagaries were such that the whole of her English suite left her, and wehear of her travelling about the Holy Land attended by another family, named Bergami. When her husband succeeded to the throne, and her namewas struck out of the liturgy, she despatched expostulations in absurdEnglish to Lord Liverpool. Receiving no answer, she decided to returnand claim her right to be crowned Queen of England. Whatever the unhappylady did, she always was ridiculous. One cannot but smile as one readsof her posting along the French roads in a yellow travelling-chariotdrawn by cart-horses, with a retinue that included an alderman, areclaimed lady-in-waiting, an Italian count, the eldest son of thealderman, and 'a fine little female child, about three years old, whomHer Majesty, in conformity with her benevolent practices on formeroccasions, had adopted. ' The breakdown of her impeachment, and heracceptance of an income formed a fitting anti-climax to the terribleabsurdities of her position. She died from the effects of a chill caughtwhen 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 amost 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 undutifuland unfeeling son. If this was so, it is certain that not all the blameis to be laid upon him alone. There is more than one anecdote whichshows that King George disliked his eldest son, and took no trouble toconceal 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 toenforce that first drove George to seek the companionship of such men asEgalité and the Duke of Cumberland, both of whom were quick to inflamehis impressionable mind to angry resentment. Yet, when MargaretNicholson attempted the life of the King, the Prince immediately postedoff from Brighton that he might wait upon his father at Windsor--agraceful act of piety that was rewarded by his father's refusal to seehim. Hated by the Queen, who at this time did all she could to keep herhusband and his son apart, surrounded by intriguers, who did all theycould to set him against his father, George seems to have behaved withgreat discretion. In the years that follow, I can conceive no positionmore difficult than that in which he found himself every time his fatherrelapsed into lunacy. That he should have by every means opposed thosewho 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, solong as there was any immediate chance of the King's recovery. On thecontrary, all impartial seers of that chaotic Court agreed that thePrince bore himself throughout the intrigues, wherein he himself wasbound to be, in a notably filial way. 

There are many things that I regret in the career of George IV. , andwhat I most of all regret is the part that he played in the politics ofthe period. Englishmen to-day have at length decided that Royalty shallnot set foot in the political arena. I do not despair that some day weshall place politics upon a sound commercial basis, as they have alreadydone in America and France, or leave them entirely in the hands of thepolice, as they do in Russia. It is horrible to think that, under ourexisting régime, all the men of noblest blood and highest intellectshould waste their time in the sordid atmosphere of the House ofCommons, listening for hours to nonentities talking nonsense, orsearching enormous volumes to prove that somebody said something someyears ago that does not quite tally with something he said the otherday, or standing tremulous before the whips in the lobbies and thescorpions in the constituencies. In the political machine are crushedand lost all our best men. That Mr. Gladstone did not choose to be acardinal is a blow under which the Roman Catholic Church still staggers. In Mr. Chamberlain Scotland Yard missed its smartest detective. What afine voluptuary might Lord Rosebery have been! It is a platitude thatthe country is ruled best by the permanent officials, and I look forwardto the time when Mr. Keir Hardie shall hang his cap in the hall ofNo. 10 Downing Street, and a Conservative working man shall lead HerMajesty's Opposition. In the lifetime of George, politics were not awhit finer than they are to-day. I feel a genuine indignation that heshould have wasted so much of tissue in mean intrigues about ministriesand bills. That he should have been fascinated by that splendid fellow, Fox, is quite right. That he should have thrown himself with all hisheart into the storm of the Westminster election is most natural. But itis awful inverideed to find him, long after he had reached man's estate, indulging in back-stair intrigues with Whigs and Tories. It is, ofcourse, absurd to charge him with deserting his first friends, theWhigs. His love and fidelity were given, not to the Whigs, but to themen who led them. Even after the death of Fox, he did, in misplacedpiety, do all he could for Fox's party. What wonder that, when he foundhe was ignored by the Ministry that owed its existence to him, he turnedhis back upon that sombre couple, the 'Lords G. And G. , ' whom he hadalways hated, and went over to the Tories? Among the Tories he hoped tofind men who would faithfully perform their duties and leave him leisureto live his own beautiful life. I regret immensely that his part inpolitics did not cease here. The state of the country and of his ownfinances, and also, I fear, a certain love that he had imbibed forpolitical manipulation, prevented him from standing aside. How uselesswas all the finesse he displayed in the long-drawn question of CatholicEmancipation! How lamentable his terror of Lord Wellesley's rudedragooning! And is there not something pitiable in the thought of theRegent at a time of ministerial complications lying prone on his bedwith a sprained ankle, and taking, as was whispered, in one day as manyas seven hundred drops of laudanum? Some said he took these doses todeaden the pain. But others, and among them his brother Cumberland, declared that the sprain was all a sham. I hope it was. The thought ofa voluptuary in pain is very terrible. In any case, I cannot but feelangry, for Georgés own sake and that of his kingdom, that he foundit impossible to keep further aloof from the wearisome troubles ofpolitical life. His wretched indecision of character made him an easyprey to unscrupulous ministers, while his extraordinary diplomaticpowers and almost extravagant tact made them, in their turn, an easyprey to him. In these two processes much of his genius was spentuntimely. I must confess that he did not quite realise where his dutiesended. He wished always to do too much. If you read his repeated appealsto his father that he might be permitted to serve actively in theBritish army against the French, you will acknowledge that it wasthrough no fault of his own that he did not fight. It touches me tothink that in his declining years he actually thought that he had ledone of the charges at Waterloo. He would often describe the whole sceneas it appeared to him at that supreme moment, and refer to the Duke ofWellington, saying, 'Was it not so, Duke?' 'I have often heard you sayso, your Majesty, ' the old soldier would reply, grimly. I am not surethat the old soldier was at Waterloo himself. In a room full ofpeople he once referred to the battle as having been won upon theplaying-fields of Eton. This was certainly a most unfortunate slip, seeing that all historians are agreed that it was fought on a certainfield 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, commandedthe army, and the younger branches of the family were either generalsor lieutenant-generals, he, who was Prince of Wales, remained colonel ofdragoons. And herein, could he have known it, lay the right limitationof his life. As Royalty was and is constituted, it is for the youngersons to take an active part in the services, whilst the eldest son isleft as the ruler of Society. Thousands and thousands of guineas weregiven 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 forus, at this moment, to consider whether Royalty, as a wholly Paganinstitution, is not out of place in a community of Christians. It isenough that we should inquire whether the god, whom our grand-fathersset up and worshipped and crowned with offerings, gave grace to hisworshippers. 

That George was a moral man, in our modern sense, I do not for onemoment pretend. It were idle to deny that he was profligate. When hedied there were found in one of his cabinets more than a hundred locksof women's hair. Some of these were still plastered with powder andpomatum, some were mere little golden curls, such as grow low downupon a girl's neck, others were streaked with grey. The whole of thiscollection subsequently passed into the hands of Adam, the famous Scotchhenchman of the Regent. In his family, now resident in Glasgow, it istreasured as an heirloom. I myself have been privileged to look at allthese locks of hair, and I have seen a clairvoyante take them one byone, and, pinching them between her lithe fingers, tell of the lovethat each symbolised. I have heard her tell of long rides by night, of aboudoir 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 angrilywhenever the Regent came near his mistress; of a milkmaid who, in hergreat simpleness, thought her child would one day be King of England;of an arch-duchess with blue eyes, and a silly little flautist fromPortugal; of women that were wantons and fought for his favour, greatladies 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 hopehe will remain virtuous. Indeed, we do not wish our Prince to be anexamplar of godliness, but a perfect type of happiness. It may befoolish of us to insist upon apolaustic happiness, but that is the kindof happiness that we can ourselves, most of us, best understand, and sowe 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 themall without stint to Society. From the time when, at Madame Cornelys', he gallivanted with rips and demireps, to the time when he sat, a stoutand solitary old king, fishing in the artificial pond at Windsor, his life was beautifully ordered. He indulged to the full in all thedelights that England could offer him. That he should have, in his oldage, suddenly abandoned his career of vigorous enjoyment is, I confess, rather surprising. The Royal voluptuary generally remains young to thelast. 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 enterCapua with wounded feet leave it demoralised. And yet George, who neverhad to wait or fight for a pleasure, fell enervate long before hisdeath. I can but attribute this to the constant persecution to which hewas subjected by duns and ministers, parents and wives. 

Not that I regret the manner in which he spent his last years. On thecontrary, 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 allthe sporting papers scattered over his quilt and a little decanter ofthe favourite cherry-brandy within easy reach. I like to think of himsitting by his fire in the afternoon and hearing his ministers ask forhim at the door and piling another log upon the fire, as he heard themsent away by his servant. It was not, I acknowledge, a life to kindlepopular enthusiasm. But most people knew little of its mode. For allthey knew, His Majesty might have been making his soul or writinghis memoirs. In reality, George was now 'too fat by far' to brook theobservation of casual eyes. Especially he hated to be seen by thosewhose 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 throughWindsor 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. AtWhités, one evening, four gentlemen of high fashion vowed, over theirwine, they would see the invisible monarch. So they rode down next dayto Windsor, and secreted themselves in the branches of a holm-oak. Herethey waited perdus, beguiling the hours and the frost with their flasks. When dusk was falling, they heard at last the chime of hoofs on thehard road, and saw presently a splash of the Royal livery, as two groomstrotted by, peering warily from side to side, and disappeared in thegloom. The conspirators in the tree held their breath, till they caughtthe distant sound of wheels. Nearer and louder came the sound, andsoon they saw a white, postillioned pony, a chaise and, yes, girthimmensurate among the cushions, a weary monarch, whose face, crimsonabove the dark accumulation of his stock, was like some ominoussunset. .. . He had passed them and they had seen him, monstrous andmoribund among the cushions. He had been borne past them like a woundedBacchanal. The King! The Regent!. .. They shuddered in the frostybranches. The night was gathering and they climbed silently to theground, with an awful, indispellible image before their eyes. 

You see, these gentlemen were not philosophers. Remember, also, thatthe strangeness of their escapade, the cramped attitude they had beencompelled to maintain in the branches of the holm-oak, the intensecold and their frequent resort to the flask must have all conspired toexaggerate their emotions and prevent them from looking at things in arational way. After all, George had lived his life. He had lived morefully than any other man. And it was better really that his death shouldbe preceded by decline. For every one, obviously, the most desirablekind of death is that which strikes men down, suddenly, in their prime. Had they not been so dangerous, railways would never have ousted theold coaches from popular favour. But, however keenly we may court sucha death for ourselves or for those who are near and dear to us, wemust always be offended whenever it befall one in whom our interest isaesthetic 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 havebeen written. Sudden death mars the unity of an admirable life. Naturaldecline, tapering to tranquillity, is its proper end. As a man's lifebegins, faintly, and gives no token of childhood's intensity and theexpansion 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 agreat, lurid poem. Quievit. 

Yes, his life was a poem, a poem in the praise of Pleasure. And it isright that we should think of him always as the great voluptuary. Onlylet us note that his nature never became, as do the natures of mostvoluptuaries, corroded by a cruel indifference to the happiness ofothers. When all the town was agog for the fête to be given by theRegent in honour of the French King, Sheridan sent a forged card ofinvitation to Romeo Coates, the half-witted dandy, who used at this timeto walk about in absurd ribbons and buckles, and was the butt of all thestreetsters. The poor fellow arrived at the entrance of Carlton House, proud as a peacock, and he was greeted with a tremendous cheer from thebystanding mob, but when he came to the lackeys he was told that hiscard was a hoax and sent about his business. The tears were rolling downhis cheeks as he shambled back into the street. The Regent heardlater in the evening of this sorry joke, and next day despatched akindly-worded message, in which he prayed that Mr. Coates would notrefuse to come and 'view the decorations, nevertheless. ' Though he doesnot appear to have treated his inferiors with the extreme servility thatis now in vogue, George was beloved by the whole of his household, andmany are the little tales that are told to illustrate the kindlinessand consideration he showed to his valets and his jockeys and hisstable-boys. That from time to time he dropped certain of his favouritesis no cause for blaming him. Remember that a Great Personage, like agreat genius, is dangerous to his fellow-creatures. The favourites ofRoyalty live in an intoxicant atmosphere. They become unaccountable fortheir behaviour. Either they get beyond themselves, and, like Brummell, forget that the King, their friend, is also their master, or they outrunthe constable and go bankrupt, or cheat at cards in order to keep uptheir position, or do some other foolish thing that makes it impossiblefor the King to favour them more. Old friends are generally the refugeof unsociable persons. Remembering this also, gauge the temptation thatbesets the very leader of Society to form fresh friendships, when allthe cleverest and most charming persons in the land are standing ready, like supers at the wings, to come on and please him! At Carlton Housethere was a constant succession of wits. Minds were preserved forthe Prince of Wales, as coverts are preserved for him to-day. For himSheridan would flash his best bon-mot, and Theodore Hook play his mostpractical joke, his swiftest chansonette. And Fox would talk, as only hecould, of Liberty and of Patriotism, and Byron would look more than everlike Isidore de Lara as he recited his own bad verses, and Sir WalterScott would 'pour out with an endless generosity his store of old-worldlearning, kindness, and humour. ' Of such men George was a splendidpatron. He did not merely sit in his chair, gaping princely at theirwit and their wisdom, but quoted with the scholars and argued withthe statesmen and jested with the wits. Doctor Burney, an impartialobserver, says that he was amazed by the knowledge of music that theRegent displayed in a half-hour's discussion over the wine. Croker saysthat 'the Prince and Scott were the two most brilliant story-tellers, in their several ways, he had ever happened to meet. Both exertedthemselves, and it was hard to say which shone the most. ' Indeed HisRoyal Highness appears to have been a fine conversationalist, with awide range of knowledge and great humour. We, who have come at length tolook upon stupidity as one of the most sacred prerogatives of Royalty, can scarcely realise that, if Georgés birth had been never so humble, hewould have been known to us as a most admirable scholar and wit, or asa connoisseur of the arts. It is pleasing to think of his love for theFlemish school of painting, for Wilkie and Sir Thomas Lawrence. Thesplendid portraits of foreign potentates that hang in the BanquetingRoom at Windsor bear witness to his sense of the canvas. In his lateryears 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 quotingthose incomparable poets, Homer, at great length, and that he wasprominent in the 'papyrus-craze. ' Indeed, he inspired Society witha love of something more than mere pleasure, a love of the 'humanerdelights. ' He was a giver of tone. At his coming, the bluff, disgustingways of the Tom and Jerry period gave way to those florid graces thatare still called Georgian. 

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

I have often wondered whether it was with a feeling that his influencewould be no more than life-long, that George allowed Carlton House, thatdear structure, the very work of his life and symbol of his being, tobe rased. I wish that Carlton House were still standing. I wish wecould still walk through those corridors, whose walls were 'crusted withormolu, ' and parquet-floors were 'so glossy that, were Narcissus to comedown from heaven, he would, I maintain, need no other mirror for hisbeauté. ' I wish that we could see the pier-glasses and the girandolesand the twisted sofas, the fauns foisted upon the ceiling and the ridentgoddesses along the wall. These things would make Georgés memory dearerto us, help us to a fuller knowledge of him. I am glad that the Pavilionstill stands here in Brighton. Its trite lawns and wanton cupolae havetaught 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 lawnsof that dishonoured palace, whilst a band played us tunes. Once Ifancied 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 inthe town, and so, if there be any whose hearts chafe at her return, letthem 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 searetrograde, or the wand of the sorcerer avail to turn the sun fromits old course? And what man or what number of men ever stayed thatinexorable process by which the cities of this world grow, are verystrong, fail, and grow again? Indeed, indeed, there is charm in everyperiod, and only fools and flutterpates do not seek reverently for whatis charming in their own day. No martyrdom, however fine, nor satire, however splendidly bitter, has changed by a little tittle the knowntendency of things. It is the times that can perfect us, not we thetimes, and so let all of us wisely acquiesce. Like the little wiredmarionettes, let us acquiesce in the dance. 

For behold! The Victorian era comes to its end and the day of sanctasimplicitas is quite ended. The old signs are here and the portents towarn the seer of life that we are ripe for a new epoch of artifice. Arenot men rattling the dice-box and ladies dipping their fingers in therouge-pot? At Rome, in the keenest time of her degringolade, when therewas gambling even in the holy temples, great ladies (does not Luciantell us?) did not scruple to squander all they had upon unguents fromArabia. Nero's mistress and unhappy wife, Poppaea, of shamefulmemory, had in her travelling retinue fifteen--or, as some say, fifty--she-asses, for the sake of their milk, that was thought anincomparable 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 besthours of the day to the crafty farding of their faces and the toweringof their coiffures. And men, throwing passion into the wine-bowl to sinkor swim, turned out thought to browse upon the green cloth. Cannot weeven now in our fancy see them, those silent exquisites round the longtable at Brooks's, masked, all of them, 'lest the countenance shouldbetray feeling, ' in quinze masks, through whose eyelets they satpeeping, peeping, while macao brought them riches or ruin! We can seethem, those silent rascals, sitting there with their cards and theirrouleaux and their wooden money-bowls, long after the dawn had creptup St. James's and pressed its haggard face against the window of thelittle club. Yes, we can raise their ghosts--and, more, we can seemany where a devotion to hazard fully as meek as theirs. In England therehas been a wonderful revival of cards. Baccarat may rival dead faro inthe tale of her devotees. We have all seen the sweet English chatelaineat her roulette wheel, and ere long it may be that tender parents willbe 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 finerscale than ever it was. We fly from the card-room to the heath, andfrom the heath to the City, and from the City to the coast of theMediterranean. And just as no one seriously encourages the clergy in itsfrantic efforts to lay the spirit of chance that has thus resurged amongus, so no longer are many faces set against that other great sign of amore complicated life, the love for cosmetics. No longer is a lady offashion blamed if, to escape the outrageous persecution of time, shefly for sanctuary to the toilet-table; and if a damosel, prying in hermirror, be sure that with brush and pigment she can trick herself intomore charm, we are not angry. Indeed, why should we ever have been?Surely it is laudable, this wish to make fair the ugly and overtopfairness, and no wonder that within the last five years the trade of themakers of cosmetics has increased immoderately--twentyfold, so one ofthese makers has said to me. We need but walk down any modish streetand peer into the little broughams that flit past, or (in Thackeray'sphrase) under the bonnet of any woman we meet, to see over how wide akingdom rouge reigns. 

And now that the use of pigments is becoming general, and most womenare not so young as they are painted, it may be asked curiously how theprejudice ever came into being. Indeed, it is hard to trace folly, forthat it is inconsequent, to its start; and perhaps it savours toomuch of reason to suggest that the prejudice was due to the tristfulconfusion man has made of soul and surface. Through trusting so keenlyto the detection of the one by keeping watch upon the other, and byforce of the thousand errors following, he has come to think of surfaceeven as the reverse of soul. He seems to suppose that every clownbeneath his paint and lip-salve is moribund and knows it (though inverity, 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 thehunting-field connects cunning with a mask. And so perhaps came man'sanger at the embellishment of women--that lovely mask of enamel with itsshadows of pink and tiny pencilled veins, what must lurk behind it?Of what treacherous mysteries may it not be the screen? Does not theheathen lacquer her dark face, and the harlot paint her cheeks, becausesorrow has made them pale?

After all, the old prejudice is a-dying. We need not pry into the secretof 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 canman, by the tangled accrescency of his own pleasures and emotions, reachthat refinement which is his highest excellence, and by making himself, so to say, independent of Nature, come nearest to God, so only in anelaborate era is woman perfect. Artifice is the strength of the world, and in that same mask of paint and powder, shadowed with vermeil tinctand most trimly pencilled, is woman's strength. 

For see! We need not look so far back to see woman under the directinfluence of Nature. Early in this century, our grandmothers, sickeningof the odour of faded exotics and spilt wine, came out into the daylightonce more and let the breezes blow around their faces and enter, sharpand welcome, into their lungs. Artifice they drove forth and they setMartin Tupper upon a throne of mahogany to rule over them. A very reignof terror set in. All things were sacrificed to the fetish Nature. Oldladies may still be heard to tell how, when they were girls, affectationwas not; and, if we verify their assertion in the light of such literaryauthorities as Dickens, we find that it is absolutely true. Women appearto have been in those days utterly natural in their conduct--flighty, fainting, blushing, gushing, giggling, and shaking their curls. Theyknew no reserve in the first days of the Victorian era. No thought washeld too trivial, no emotion too silly, to express. To Nature everythingwas sacrificed. Great heavens! And in those barren days what influencedid women exert! By men they seem not to have been feared nor loved, butregarded rather as 'dear little creatures' or 'wonderful littlebeings, ' and in their relation to life as foolish and ineffectual as thelandscapes they did in water-colour. Yet, if the women of those yearswere of no great account, they had a certain charm, and they at leasthad not begun to trespass upon men's ground; if they touched notthought, which is theirs by right, at any rate they refrained fromaction, which is ours. Far more serious was it when, in the naturaltrend of time, they became enamoured of rinking and archery andgalloping along the Brighton Parade. Swiftly they have sped on sincethen from horror to horror. The invasion of the tennis-courts and of thegolf-links, the seizure of the bicycle and of the typewriter, werebut steps preliminary in that campaign which is to end with the finalvictorious occupation of St. Stephen's. But stay! The horrific pioneersof womanhood who gad hither and thither and, confounding wisdom with thedevice on her shield, shriek for the unbecoming, are doomed. Though theyspin their bicycle-treadles so amazingly fast, they are too late. Thoughthey scream victory, none follow them. Artifice, that fair exile, hasreturned. 

Yes, though the pioneers know it not, they are doomed already. For ofthe curiosities of history not the least strange is the manner in whichtwo 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 onehas seen the limbs of a murdered thing in lively movement, so we neednot doubt that, though the voices of those who cry out for reform bevery terribly shrill, they will soon be hushed. Dear Artifice is withus. It needed but that we should wait. 

Surely, without any of my pleading, women will welcome their great andamiable protectrix, as by instinct. For (have I not said?) it is uponher that all their strength, their life almost, depends. Artificés firstcommand to them is that they should repose. With bodily activity theirpowder will fly, their enamel crack. They are butterflies who must notflit, if they love their bloom. Now, setting aside the point of view ofpassion, from which very many obvious things might be said (and probablyhave been by the minor poets), it is, from the intellectual point ofview, quite necessary that a woman should repose. Hers is the resupinatesex. On her couch she is a goddess, but so soon as ever she put her footto the ground--ho, she is the veriest little sillypop, and quite donefor. She cannot rival us in action, but she is our mistress in thethings of the mind. Let her not by second-rate athletics, nor indeedby any exercise soever of the limbs, spoil the pretty procedure of herreason. Let her be content to remain the guide, the subtle suggesterof what we must do, the strategist whose soldiers we are, the littlearchitect whose workmen. 

'After all, ' as a pretty girl once said to me, 'women are a sex bythemselves, so to speak, ' and the sharper the line between their worldlyfunctions and ours, the better. This greater swiftness and less erringsubtlety of mind, their forte and privilege, justifies the painted maskthat Artifice bids them wear. Behind it their minds can play withoutlet. They gain the strength of reserve. They become important, as inthe days of the Roman Empire were the Emperor's mistresses, as was thePompadour at Versailles, as was our Elizabeth. Yet do not their facesbecome lined with thought; beautiful and without meaning are theirfaces. 

And, truly, of all the good things that will happen with the fullrevival of cosmetics, one of the best is that surface will finallybe severed from soul. That damnable confusion will be solved by theextinguishing of a prejudice which, as I suggest, itself created. Toolong has the face been degraded from its rank as a thing of beauty toa mere vulgar index of character or emotion. We had come to troublingourselves, not with its charm of colour and line, but with suchquestions as whether the lips were sensuous, the eyes full ofsadness, the nose indicative of determination. I have no quarrel withphysiognomy. For my own part I believe in it. But it has tended todegrade the face aesthetically, in such wise as the study of cheirosophyhas tended to degrade the hand. And the use of cosmetics, the masking ofthe face, will change this. We shall gaze at a woman merely because sheis beautiful, not stare into her face anxiously, as into the face of abarometer. 

How fatal it has been, in how many ways, this confusion of soul andservice! Wise were the Greeks in making plain masks for their mummers toplay in, and dunces we not to have done the same! Only the other day, anactress was saying that what she was most proud of in her art--next, ofcourse, to having appeared in some provincial pantomime at the age ofthree--was the deftness with which she contrived, in parts demanding arapid succession of emotions, to dab her cheeks quite quickly with rougefrom 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 thepresentment of the soul in action. The mirror of the soul is the voice. Let the young critics, who seek a cheap reputation for austerity, bycavilling at 'incidental music, ' set their faces rather against theattempt to justify inferior dramatic art by the subvention of a quitealien art like painting, of any art, indeed, whose sphere is onlysurface. Let those, again, who sneer, so rightly, at the 'paintedanecdotes of the Academy, ' censure equally the writers who trespass onpainters' ground. It is a proclaimed sin that a painter should concernhimself 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 isno worse than for a novelist to refuse to dip under the surface, and thefashion of avoiding a psychological study of grief by stating that theowner's hair turned white in a single night, or of shame by mentioninga 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 ofsoul and surface, upon which, at the risk of irritating a reader, Imust again insist, all those old properties that went to bolster up theordinary novel--the trembling lips, the flashing eyes, the determinedcurve of the chin, the nervous trick of biting the moustache, aye, andthe hectic spot of red on either cheek--will be made spiflicate, as thepuppets were spiflicated by Don Quixote. Yes, even now Demos begins todiscern. The same spirit that has revived rouge, smote his mouth as itgrinned at the wondrous painter of mist and river, and now sends himsprawling for the pearls that Meredith dived for in the deep waters ofromance. 

Indeed the revival of cosmetics must needs be so splendid an influence, conjuring boons innumerable, that one inclines almost to mutter againstthat inexorable law by which Artifice must perish from time totime. That such branches of painting as the staining of glass orthe illuminating of manuscripts should fall into disuse seems, incomparison, so likely; these were esoteric arts; they died with themonastic spirit. But personal appearance is art's very basis. Thepainting 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? Butto make oneself beautiful is an universal instinct. Strange that theresultant art could ever perish! So fascinating an art too! So variousin its materials from stimmis, psimythium, and fuligo to bismuth andarsenic, so simple in that its ground and its subject-matter are one, somarvellous in that its very subject-matter becomes lovely when an artisthas selected it! For surely this is no idle nor fantastic saying. Todeny that 'making up' is an art, on the pretext that the finished workof its exponents depends for beauty and excellence upon the groundchosen for the work, is absurd. At the touch of a true artist, theplainest face turns comely. As subject-matter the face is no more thansuggestive, as ground, merely a loom round which the beatus artifex mayspin the threads of any golden fabric:

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

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

But of course Artifice is rather exacting. In return for the repose sheforces--so wisely!--upon her followers when the sun is high or the moonis blown across heaven, she demands that they should pay her longhomage at the sun's rising. The initiate may not enter lightly upon hermysteries. For, if a bad complexion be inexcusable, to be ill-painted isunforgivable; and, when the toilet is laden once more with the fulnessof its elaboration, we shall hear no more of the proper occupation forwomen. 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 uponthe walls of Roman ruins, or, rather still, read Böttiger's alluring, scholarly description of 'Morgenscenen im Puttzimmer Einer ReichenRömerin. ' Read of Sabina's face as she comes through the curtain of herbed-chamber to the chamber of her toilet. The slavegirls have long beenchafing their white feet upon the marble floor. They stand, those timidGreek girls, marshalled in little battalions. Each has her appointedtask, and all kneel in welcome as Sabina stalks, ugly and frowning, tothe toilet chair. Scaphion steps forth from among them, and, dipping atiny 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 theAegean. In her left hand she holds the ivory box wherein are the phucusand 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 sweetproportion blushes and blanches her lady's upturned face. Phiale is thecleverest of all the slaves. Now Calamis dips her quill in a certainpowder that floats, liquid and sable, in the hollow of her palm. Standing upon tip-toe and with lips parted, she traces the arch of theeyebrows. The slaves whisper loudly of their lady's beauty, and two ofthem hold up a mirror to her. Yes, the eyebrows are rightly arched. Butwhy does Psecas abase herself? She is craving leave to powder Sabina'shair with a fine new powder. It is made of the grated rind of thecedar-tree, and a Gallic perfumer, whose stall is near the Circus, gaveit to her for a kiss. No lady in Rome knows of it. And so, when fourspecial slaves have piled up the headdress, out of a perforated boxthis glistening powder is showered. Into every little brown ringlet itenters, till Sabina's hair seems like a pile of gold coins. Lest thebreezes 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 alooffrom them. Cosmetics are not going to be a mere prosaic remedy for ageor plainness, but all ladies and all young girls will come to love them. Does not a certain blithe Marquise, whose lettres intimes from the Courtof Louis Seize are less read than their wit deserves, tell us how shewas scandalised to see 'même les toutes jeunes demoiselles émailléescomme ma tabatièré? So it shall be with us. Surely the common prejudiceagainst painting the lily can but be based on mere ground of economy. That which is already fair is complete, it may be urged--urgedimplausibly, for there are not so many lovely things in this world thatwe can afford not to know each one of them by heart. There is only onewhite lily, and who that has ever seen--as I have--a lily really wellpainted could grudge the artist so fair a ground for his skill? Scarcelydo you believe through how many nice metamorphoses a lily may be passedby him. In like manner, we all know the young girl, with her simpleness, her goodness, her wayward ignorance. And a very charming ideal forEngland must she have been, and a very natural one, when a young girlsat even on the throne. But no nation can keep its ideal for ever, andit needed none of Mr. Gilbert's delicate satire in 'Utopia' to remind usthat she had passed out of our ken with the rest of the early Victorianera. What writer of plays, as lately asked some pressman, who had beentold 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 heseeks inspiration from the tried and tired woman of the world, in allher intricate maturity, whilst, by way of comic relief, he sends theyoung girl flitting in and out with a tennis-racket, the poor eidôlonamauron of her former self. The season of the unsophisticated is goneby, and the young girl's final extinction beneath the rising tides ofcosmetics will leave no gap in life and will rob art of nothing. 

'Tush, ' I can hear some damned flutterpate exclaim, 'girlishness andinnocence are as strong and as permanent as womanhood itself! Why, a fewmonths past, the whole town went mad over Miss Cissie Loftus! Was nothers a success of girlish innocence and the absence of rouge? If suchthings as these be outmoded, why was she so wildly popular?' Indeed, the triumph of that clever girl, whose début made London nice even inAugust, is but another witness to the truth of my contention. In a verysophisticated time, simplicity has a new dulcedo. Hers was a success ofcontrast. Accustomed to clever malaperts like Miss Lloyd or Miss Reeve, whose experienced pouts and smiles under the sun-bonnet are a standingburlesque of innocence and girlishness, Demos was really delighted, for once and away, to see the real presentment of these things upon hisstage. Coming after all those sly serios, coming so young and mere withher pink frock and straightly combed hair, Miss Cissie Loftus had thecharm which things of another period often do possess. Besides, justas we adored her for the abrupt nod with which she was wont at first toacknowledge the applause, so we were glad for her to come upon the stagewith 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 atSolomons'. She was delightful. And yet, such is the force of convention, that when last I saw her, playing in some burlesque at the Gaiety, herfringe was curled and her pretty face rouged with the best of them. And, if further need be to show the absurdity of having calledher performance 'a triumph of naturalness over the jaded spiritof modernity, ' let us reflect that the little mimic was not a realold-fashioned girl after all. She had none of that restless naturalnessthat would seem to have characterised the girl of the early Victoriandays. She had no pretty ways--no smiles nor blushes nor tremors. Possibly Demos could not have stood a presentment of girlishnessunrestrained. 

But, with her grave insouciance, Miss Cissie Loftus had much of thereserve that is one of the factors of feminine perfection, and to mostcomes only, as I have said, with artifice. Her features played very, very slightly. And in truth, this may have been one of the reasons ofher 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 thatwomen shall never be betrayed into 'an unbecoming emotion, ' when thebrunette shall never have cause to blush nor La Gioconda to frown, the safest way by far is to create, by brush and pigments, artificialexpression for every face. 

And this--say you?--will make monotony? You are mistaken, tots caelomistaken. When your mistress has wearied you with one expression, thenit will need but a few touches of that pencil, a backward sweep of thatbrush, and ho, you will be revelling in another. For though, of course, the painting of the face is, in manner, most like the painting ofcanvas, in outcome it is rather akin to the art of music--lasting, likemusic's echo, not for very long. So that, no doubt, of the many littleappurtenances of the Reformed Toilet Table, not the least vital willbe a list of the emotions that become its owner, with recipes forsimulating them. According to the colour she wills her hair to be forthe time--black or yellow or, peradventure, burnished red--she willblush for you, sneer for you, laugh or languish for you. The goodcombinations of line and colour are nearly numberless, and by theirmeans poor restless woman will be able to realise her moods in all theirshades and lights and dappledoms, to live many lives and masqueradethrough many moments of joy. No monotony will be. And for us menmatrimony will have lost its sting. 

But that in the world of women they will not neglect this art, soripping in itself, in its result so wonderfully beneficent, I am sureindeed. Much, I have said, is already done for its full revival. Thespirit of the age has made straight the path of its professors. Fashionhas made Jezebel surrender her monopoly of the rouge-pot. As yet, thegreat art of self-embellishment is for us but in its infancy. But ifEnglishwomen can bring it to the flower of an excellence so supreme asnever yet has it known, then, though Old England lose her martial andcommercial supremacy, we patriots will have the satisfaction of knowingthat she has been advanced at one bound to a place in the councilsof aesthetic Europe. And, in sooth, is this hoping too high of mycountrywomen? True that, as the art seems always to have appealed to theladies of Athens, and it was not until the waning time of the Republicthat Roman ladies learned to love the practice of it, so Paris, Athenianin this as in all other things, has been noted hitherto as a far morevivid centre of the art than London. But it was in Rome, under theEmperors, that unguentaria reached its zenith, and shall it not be inLondon, soon, that unguentaria shall outstrip its Roman perfection!Surely there must be among us artists as cunning in the use of brushand puff as any who lived at Versailles. Surely the splendid, impalpableadvance of good taste, as shown in dress and in the decoration ofhouses, may justify my hope of the preëminence of Englishwomen in thecosmetic art. By their innate delicacy of touch they will accomplishmuch, and much, of course, by their swift feminine perception. Yet itwere well that they should know something also of the theoretical sideof the craft. Modern authorities upon the mysteries of the toilet are, it is true, rather few; but among the ancients many a writer would seemto have been fascinated by them. Archigenes, a man of science at theCourt of Cleopatra, and Criton at the Court of the Emperor Trajan, bothwrote treatises upon cosmetics--doubtless most scholarly treatises thatwould 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 thatOvid has set aside for the consideration of dyes, perfumes, andpomades. Written by an artist who knew the allurement of the toilet andunderstood its philosophy, it remains without rival as a treatise uponArtifice. It is more than a poem, it is a manual; and if there be leftin England any lady who cannot read Latin in the original, she will dowell to procure a discreet translation. In the Bodleian Library thereis treasured the only known copy of a very poignant and delightfulrendering of this one book of Ovid's masterpiece. It was made by acertain Wye Waltonstall, who lived in the days of Elizabeth, and, seeingthat he dedicated it to 'the Vertuous Ladyes and Gentlewomen of GreatBritain, ' I am sure that the gallant writer, could he know of our greatrenaissance of cosmetics, would wish his little work to be placed oncemore within their reach. 'Inasmuch as to you, ladyes and gentlewomen, 'so he writes in his queer little dedication, 'my booke of pigments dothfirst addresse itself, that it may kisse your hands and afterward havethe lines thereof in reading sweetened by the odour of your breath, while the dead letters formed into words by your divided lips mayreceive new life by your passionate expression, and the words marryedin that Ruby coloured temple may thus happily united, multiply yourcontentment. ' It is rather sad to think that, at this crisis in thehistory of pigments, the Vertuous Ladyes and Gentlewomen cannot read thelibellus of Wye Waltonstall, who did so dearly love pigments. 

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

Loveliness shall sit at the toilet, watching her oval face in the ovalmirror. Her smooth fingers shall flit among the paints and powder, totip and mingle them, catch up a pencil, clasp a phial, and what notand what not, until the mask of vermeil tinct has been laid aptly, theenamel quite hardened. And, heavens, how she will charm us and ensorcelour 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 wholestreet where nothing was sold but dyes and unguents? We must have sucha street, and, to fill our new Seplasia, our Arcade of the Unguents, allherbs and minerals and live creatures shall give of their substance. The white cliffs of Albion shall be ground to powder for Loveliness, andperfumed by the ghost of many a little violet. The fluffy eider-ducks, that are swimming round the pond, shall lose their feathers, that thepowder-puff may be moonlike as it passes over Loveliness' lovely face. Even the camels shall become ministers of delight, giving many tuftsof their hair to be stained in her splendid colour-box, and across hercheek the swift harés foot shall fly as of old. The sea shall offer herthe phucus, its scarlet weed. We shall spill the blood of mulberriesat her bidding. And, as in another period of great ecstasy, a dancingwanton, la belle Aubrey, was crowned upon a church's lighted altar, so Arsenic, that 'greentress'd goddess, ' ashamed at length of skulkingbetween the soup of the unpopular and the test-tubes of the Queen'sanalyst, shall be exalted to a place of consummate honour upon thetoilet-table of Loveliness. 

All these things shall come to pass. Times of jolliness and gladindulgence! 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 awelcome!

Oxford, 1894. 

Poor Romeo!

Even now Bath glories in his legend, not idly, for he was the mostfantastic animal that ever stepped upon her pavement. Were ever a statuegiven him (and indeed he is worthy of a grotesque in marble), it wouldbe put in Pulteney Street or the Circus. I know that the palm trees ofAntigua overshadowed his cradle, that there must be even now in Boulognemany 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) mustbe claimed by none of these places. Bath saw the laughable disaster ofhis 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 trodthe English shore. But, for all his thirty-seven years, he had the heartof 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 theletters of introduction that he scattered everywhere. Also, he was agentleman 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 withdistinguished travellers through the Indies. But in the year 1807 oldMr. Coates had died. As we may read in vol. Lxxviii. Of The Gentleman'sMagazine, 'the Almighty, whom he alone feared, was pleased to take himfrom this life, after having sustained an untarnished reputation forseventy-three years, ' a passage which, though objectionable in itstheology, gives the true story of Romeo's antecedents and disposes ofthe later calumnies that declared him the son of a tailor. Realisingthat he was now an orphan, an orphan with not a few grey hairs, our herohad set sail in quest of amusing adventure. 

For three months he took the waters of Bath, unobtrusively, like otherwell-bred visitors. His attendance was solicited for all the mostfashionable routs, and at assemblies he sat always in the shade of sometitled turban. In fact, Mr. Coates was a great success. There was an airof most romantic mystery that endeared his presence to all the damselsfluttering fans in the Pump Room. It set them vying for his conductthrough the mazes of the Quadrille or of the Triumph, and blushing atthe sound of his name. Alas! their tremulous rivalry lasted not long. Soon they saw that Emma, sole daughter of Sir James Tylney Long, thatwealthy baronet, had cast a magic net about the warm Antiguan heart. Inthe wake of her chair, by night and day, Mr. Coates was obsequious. Whenshe cried that she would not drink the water without some delicacyto banish the iron taste, it was he who stood by with a box ofvanilla-rusks. When he shaved his great moustachio, it was at hercaprice. And his devotion to Miss Emma was the more noted for thathis own considerable riches were proof that it was true and single. Hehimself 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 wouldthee ensnare Not for thy merit, but thy fortunés sake. Give me yourhand--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 breastof middle-age. Not that Mr. Coates was laughed at in Bath for alove-a-lack-a-daisy. On the contrary, his mien, his manner, were as yetso studiously correct, his speech so reticent, that laughter had beenunusually inept. The only strange taste evinced by him was his devotionto theatricals. He would hold forth, by the hour, upon the fineconception of such parts as Macbeth, Othello and, especially, Romeo. Many ladies and gentlemen were privileged to hear him recite, in thisor that drawing-room, after supper. All testified to the real fire withwhich he inflamed the lines of love or hatred. His voice, his gesture, his scholarship, were all approved. A fine symphony of praise assuredMr. 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 thatcontemptuous 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, whosememoirs we know. Mr. Coates himself was staying at number ** Gay Street, but was in the habit of breakfasting daily at the York House, wherehe attracted Mr. Gordon's attention by 'rehearsing passages fromShakespeare, with a tone and gesture extremely striking both to the eyeand the ear. ' Mr. Gordon warmly complimented him and suggested that heshould give a public exposition of his art. The cheeks of the amateurflushed with pleasure. 'I am ready and willing, ' he replied, 'to playRomeö to a Bath audience, if the manager will get up the play and giveme a good "Juliet"; my costume is superb and adorned with diamonds, butI have not the advantage of knowing the manager, Dimonds. ' Pleased bythe stranger's ready wit, Mr. Gordon scribbled a note of introduction toDimonds there and then. So soon as he had 'discussed a brace of muffinsand so many eggs, ' the new Romeo started for the playhouse, and thatvery day bills were posted to the effect that 'a Gentleman of Fashionwould make his first appearance on February 9 in a rôle of Shakespeare. 'All the lower boxes were immediately secured by Lady Belmore and otherlights of Bath. 'Butlers and Abigails, ' it is said, 'were commanded bytheir mistresses to take their stand in the centre of the pit and giveMr. Coates a capital, hearty clapping. ' Indeed, throughout the week thatelapsed before the première, no pains were spared in assuring a greatsuccess. 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 ofVerona 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 overthat bolster-cravat, and under that Charles II. Wig and opera-hat? Fromwhose shoulders hung that spangled sky-blue cloak? Was this bedizenedscarecrow the Amateur of Fashion, for sight of whom they had paid theirshillings? At length a voice from the gallery cried, 'Good evening, Mr. Coates, ' and, as the Antiguan--for he it was--bowed low, the theatre wasfilled with yells of merriment. Only the people in the boxes were stillsilent, staring coldly at the protégé who had played them so odious aprank. Lady Belmore rose and called for her chariot. Her example wasfollowed by several ladies of rank. The rest sat spellbound, and oftheir number was Miss Tylney Long, at whose rigid face many glasseswere, of course, directed. Meanwhile the play proceeded. Those linesthat were not drowned in laughter Mr. Coates spoke in the most foolishand extravagant manner. He cut little capers at odd moments. He laid hishand 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 downto the footlights, he laid it on the cushion of the stage-box and beggedthe inmates to refresh themselves, and to 'pass the golden trifle on. 'The performance, so obviously grotesque, was just the kind of thing toplease the gods. The limp of Hephaestus could not have called laughterso unquenchable from their lips. It is no trifle to set Englishmenlaughing, but once you have done it, you can hardly stop them. Act afteract of the beautiful love-play was performed without one sign of satietyfrom the seers of it. The laughter rather swelled in volume. Romeo diedin so ludicrous a way that a cry of 'encoré arose and the death wasactually twice repeated. At the fall of the curtain there was prolongedapplause. Mr. Coates came forward, and the good-humoured public peltedhim 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 littleproud. Such is the traditional account of this curious début. Mr. PryseGordon, however, in his memoirs tells another tale. He professes tohave seen nothing peculiar in Romeo's dress, save its display of finediamonds, and to have admired the whole interpretation. The attitudeof 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 broodedespecially on the question. Indeed, Bath, with her faded memories, hertristesse, drives one to reverie. Fashion no longer smiles from herwindows nor dances in her sunshine, and in her deserted parks theinvalids build up their constitutions. Now and again, as one of thefrequent chairs glided past me, I wondered if its shadowy freight werethe ghost of poor Romeo. I felt sure that the traditional account of hisdébut was mainly correct. How could it, indeed, be false? Tradition isalways a safer guide to truth than is the tale of one man. I might amusemyself here, in Bath, by verifying my notion of the début or proving itfalse. 

One morning I was walking through a narrow street in the western quarterof Bath, and came to the window of a very little shop, which was fullof dusty books, prints and engravings. I spied in one corner of it thediscoloured print of a queer, lean figure, posturing in a garden. In onehand this figure held a snuff-box, in the other an opera-hat. Its sharpfeatures and wide grin, flanked by luxuriant whiskers, looked strangeunder a Caroline wig. Above it was a balcony and a lady in an attitudeof surprise. Beneath it were these words, faintly lettered: BombastesCoates wooing the Peerless Capulet, that's 'nough (that snuff) 1809. Icoveted the print. I went into the shop. 

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

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

'You saw him?'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'When he had read it through, the poor gentleman tore it into manyfragments, and stood staring before him, pale as a ghost. "I must notstay another hour in Bath, " he said. When he was gone, my father (Godforgive him!) gathered up all the scraps of the letter, and for a longtime he tried to piece them together. But there were a great many ofthem, 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 outsomething from them. But even I never seemed to get near it. I've neverthrown them away, though. They're in a box. '

I got them for a piece of gold that I could ill spare--some score orso of shreds of yellow paper, traversed with pale ink. The joy of thearchaeologist with an unknown papyrus, of the detective with a clue, surged in me. Indeed, I was not sure whether I was engaged in privateinquiry or in research; so recent, so remote was the mystery. After twodays' 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. Ihave compelled you to be far more a Fool than you made me at thefête-champêtre of Lady B. & I, having accomplished my aim, am ready toforgive you now, as you implored me on the occasion of the fête. Butpray build no Hope that I, forgiving you, will once more regard you asmy Suitor. For that cannot ever be. I decided you should show yourselfa Fool before many people. But such Folly does not commend your hand tomine. Therefore desist your irksome attention &, if need be, begone fromBath. I have punished you, & would save my eyes the trouble to turn awayfrom your person. I pray that you regard this epistle as privileged andprivate. 

E. T. L. 10 of February. 

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

The bookseller was greatly excited when I told him I had re-created theletter. 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 hehad ever heard, in his youth, of any scene that had passed between MissTylney Long and Mr. Coates at some fête-champêtre. The old man thoughtfor some time, but he could not help me. Where then, I asked him, couldI search old files of local news-papers? He told me that there weresupposed to be many such files mouldering in the archives of the TownHall. 

I secured access, without difficulty, to these files. A whole day Ispent in searching the copies issued by this and that journal during themonths that Romeo was in Bath. In the yellow pages of these forgottenprints I came upon many complimentary allusions to Mr. Coates: 'Thevisitor welcomed (by all our aristocracy) from distant Ind, ' 'theubiquitous, ' 'the charitable riche. ' Of his 'forthcoming impersonationof Romeo and Juliet' there were constant puffs, quite in the modernmanner. The accounts of his début all showed that Mr. Pryse Gordon'saccount of it was fabulous. In one paper there was a bitter attack on'Mr. Gordon, who was responsible for this insult to Thespian art, thegentry, and the people, for he first arranged the whole production'--anextract which makes it clear that this gentleman had a good motive forhis version of the affair. 

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

'Mr. C**t*s, who will act Romeo (Wherefore art thou Romeo?) thiscoming week for the pleasure of his fashionable circle, incurred thecontemptuous wrath of his Lady Fair at the Fête. It was a sad pity sheentrusted him to hold her purse while she fed the gold-fishes. He wasvery proud of the honour till the gold fell from his hand among thegold-fishes. How appropriate was the misadventure! But Miss Black Eyes, angry at her loss and her swain's clumsiness, cried: "Jump into thepond, sir, and find my purse instanter!" Several wags encouraged her, and the ladies were of the opinion that her adorer should certainly divefor the treasure. "Alas, " the fellow said, "I cannot swim, Miss. Buttell me how many guineas you carried and I will make them good toyourself. " There was a great deal of laughter at this encounter, and thehaughty damsel turned on her heel, nor did shoe vouchsafe another wordto 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 tothe Baronet's house next day with a bouquet of flowers and passionatelyabasing himself, craving her forgiveness. One can fancy the woundedvanity of the girl, her shame that people had mocked her for thedisobedience of her suitor. Revenge, as her letter shows, became herone thought. She would strike him through his other love, the love ofThespis. 'I have compelled you, ' she wrote afterwards, in her bittertriumph, 'to be a greater Fool than you made me. ' She, then, it was thatdrove him to his public absurdity, she who insisted that he should neverwin her unless he sacrificed his dear longing for stage-laurels andactually pilloried himself upon the stage. The wig, the pantaloons, thesnuff-box, the grin, were all conceived, I fancy, in her pitiless spite. It is possible that she did but say: 'The more ridiculous you makeyourself, 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 apparelbefore a mirror. How loath must he have been to desecrate the lines heloved so dearly and had longed to declaim in all their beauty and theirresonance! And then, what irony at the daily rehearsal! With how sad asmile must he have received the compliments of Mr. Dimonds on hisfine performance, knowing how different it would all be 'on the night!'Nothing could have steeled him to the ordeal but his great love. Hemust have wavered, had not the exaltation of his love protected him. Butthe 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. Shemade her love, a few months after, one who married her for her fortuneand broke her heart. In years of misery the wayward girl worked outthe penance of her unpardonable sin, dying, at length, in poverty anddespair. 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 6thSeptember 1823, at St. Georgés, Hanover Square, Mr. Coates was marriedto Miss Anne Robinson, who was a faithful and devoted wife to him tillhe died. 

Meanwhile, the rejected Romeo did not long repine. Two months after thetragedy at Bath, he was at Brighton, mingling with all the fashionablefolk, and giving admirable recitations at routs. He was seen every dayon the Parade, attired in an extravagant manner, very different to thathe had adopted in Bath. A pale-blue surtout, tasselled Hessians, and acocked hat were the most obvious items of his costume. He also affecteda very curious tumbril, shaped like a shell and richly gilded. Inthis he used to drive around, every afternoon, amid the gapes of thepopulace. 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 thelove of absurd ostentation. A lively example of dandyism unrestrainedby taste, he parodied in his person the foibles of Mr. Brummell and theKing. His diamonds and his equipage and other follies became thegossip of every newspaper in England. Nor did a day pass without thepublication of some little rigmarole from his pen. Wherever there was avacant theatre--were it in Cheltenham, Birmingham, or any other town--hewould engage it for his productions. One night he would play hisfavourite part, Romeo, with reverence and ability. The next, he wouldrepeat his first travesty in all its hideous harlequinade. Indeed, therecan be little doubt that Mr. Coates, with his vile performances, mustbe held responsible for the decline of dramatic art in England and theinvasion of the amateur. The sight of such folly, strutting unabashed, spoilt the prestige of the theatre. To-day our stage is filled withtailors'-dummy heroes, with heroines who have real curls and can openand shut their eyes and, at a pinch, say 'mamma' and 'papa. ' Wemust blame the Antiguan, I fear, for their existence. It was he--therascal--who first spread that scenae sacra fames. Some say that he wasa schemer and impostor, feigning eccentricity for his private ends. Theyare quite wrong; Mr. Coates was a very good man. He never made a pennyout of his performances; he even lost many hundred pounds. Moreover, ashis speeches before the curtain and his letters to the papers show, he took himself quite seriously. Only the insane take themselves quiteseriously. 

It was the unkindness of his love that maddened him. But he lived tobe the lightest-hearted of lunatics and caused great amusement for manyyears. Whether we think of him in his relation to history or psychology, dandiacal or dramatic art, he is a salient, pathetic figure. That he ismemorable for his defects, not for his qualities, I know. But Romeo, in the tragedy of his wild love and frail intellect, in the folly thatstretched the corners of his 'peculiar grin' and shone in his diamondsand was emblazoned upon his tumbril, is more suggestive than some sages. He was so fantastic an animal that Oblivion were indeed amiss. If nomore, he was a great Fool. In any case, it would be fun to have seenhim. 

London, 1896. 

Diminuendo

In the year of grace 1890, and in the beautiful autumn of that year, Iwas a freshman at Oxford. I remember how my tutor asked me what lecturesI wished to attend, and how he laughed when I said that I wished toattend the lectures of Mr. Walter Pater. Also I remember how, onemorning soon after, I went into Ryman's to order some foolish engravingfor 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 oneof the many discords in that little city of learning or laughter. Theserried bristles of his moustachio made for him a false-military air. Ithink 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 admirethe man as a stylist. Even then I was angry that he should treat Englishas a dead language, bored by that sedulous ritual wherewith he laid outevery sentence as in a shroud--hanging, like a widower, long over itsmarmoreal beauty or ever he could lay it at length in his book, itssepulchre. From that laden air, the so cadaverous murmur of thatsanctuary, I would hook it at the beck of any jade. The writing of Paterhad never, indeed, appealed to me, all' aiei, having regard to the couthsolemnity of his mind, to his philosophy, his rare erudition, tina phôtamegan kai kalon edegmen [I received some great and beautiful light]. AndI suppose it was when at length I saw him that I first knew him to befallible. 

At school I had read Marius the Epicurean in bed and with a darklantern. Indeed, I regarded it mainly as a tale of adventure, quite asfascinating as Midshipman Easy, and far less hard to understand, becausethere were no nautical terms in it. Marryat, moreover, never made mewish to run away to sea, whilst certainly Pater did make me wish formore 'colour' in the curriculum, for a renaissance of the Farrarperiod, when there was always 'a sullen spirit of revolt against theauthorities'; when lockers were always being broken into and marksfalsified, and small boys prevented from saying their prayers, insomuchthat they vowed they would no longer buy brandy for their seniors. Insome schools, I am told, the pretty old custom of roasting a fourth-formboy, whole, upon Founder's Day still survives. But in my school therewas less sentiment. I ended by acquiescing in the slow revolution of itswheel of work and play. I felt that at Oxford, when I should be of ageto matriculate, a 'variegated dramatic lifé was waiting for me. I wasnot a little too sanguine, alas!

How sad was my coming to the university! Where were those sweetconditions I had pictured in my boyhood? Those antique contrasts? DidI ride, one sunset, through fens on a palfrey, watching the goldreflections on Magdalen Tower? Did I ride over Magdalen Bridge and hearthe consonance of evening-bells and cries from the river below? Did Irein in to wonder at the raised gates of Queen's, the twisted pillars ofSt. Mary's, the little shops, lighted with tapers? Did bull-pups snarlat me, or dons, with bent backs, acknowledge my salute? Any one whoknows the place as it is, must see that such questions are purelyrhetorical. To him I need not explain the disappointment that beset mewhen, after being whirled in a cab from the station to a big hotel, Iwandered out into the streets. On aurait dit a bit of Manchester throughwhich Apollo had once passed; for here, among the hideous trains and thebrand-new bricks--here, glared at by the electric-lights that hung frompoles, screamed at by boys with the Echo and the Star--here, in a riotof vulgarity, were remnants of beauty, as I discerned. There were onlyremnants. 

Soon also I found that the life of the place, like the place, hadlost its charm and its tradition. Gone were the contrasts that made itwonderful. That feud between undergraduates and dons--latent, in theold days, only at times when it behoved the two academic grades to uniteagainst the townspeople--was one of the absurdities of the past. Thetownspeople now looked just like undergraduates and the dons just liketownspeople. So splendid was the train-service between Oxford and Londonthat, with hundreds of passengers daily, the one had become littlebetter than a suburb of the other. What more could extensionists demand?As for me, I was disheartened. Bitter were the comparisons I drewbetween my coming to Oxford and the coming of Marius to Rome. Could itbe that there was at length no beautiful environment wherein a man mightsound the harmonies of his soul? Had civilisation made beauty, besidesadventure, so rare? I wondered what counsel Pater, insistent always uponcontact with comely things, would offer to one who could nowhere findthem. I had been wondering that very day when I went into Ryman's andsaw him there. 

When the tumult of my disillusioning was past, my mind grew clearer. Idiscerned that the scope of my quest for emotion must be narrowed. Thatabandonment of onés self to life, that merging of onés soul in brightwaters, so often suggested in Pater's writing, were a counsel impossiblefor to-day. The quest of emotions must be no less keen, certainly, butthe manner of it must be changed forthwith. To unswitch myself from mysurroundings, to guard my soul from contact with the unlovely thingsthat compassed it about, therein lay my hope. I must approach the BenignMother with great caution. And so, while most of the freshmen 'weredoing 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 didI wonder whether I was not wasting my days, and, wondering, abandon mymeditations 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 wasfascinating to watch the ways of its children. The prodigious life ofthe Prince of Wales fascinated me above all; indeed, it still fascinatesme. What experience has been withheld from His Royal High-ness? Was everso 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 onhorses, or, from some night-boat, the holocaust of great wharves bythe side of the Thames; raced through the blue Solent; threaded lescoulisses! He has danced in every palace of every capital, played inevery club. He has hunted eleplants through the jungles of India, boarthrough the forests of Austria, pigs over the plains of Massachusetts. From the Castle of Abergeldie he has led his Princess into the frostynight, Highlanders lighting with torches the path to the deer-larder, where lay the wild things that had fallen to him on the crags. He hasmarched the Grenadiers to chapel through the white streets of Windsor. He has ridden through Moscow, in strange apparel, to kiss the catafalqueof more than one Tzar. For him the Rajahs of India have spoiled theirtemples, and Blondin has crossed Niagara along the tight-rope, and theGiant Guard done drill beneath the chandeliers of the Neue Schloss. Incline he to scandal, lawyers are proud to whisper their secrets inhis ear. Be he gallant, the ladies are at his feet. Ennuyé, all the witsfrom Bernal Osborne to Arthur Roberts have jested for him. He has been'present always at the focus where the greatest number of forces unitein their purest energy, ' for it is his presence that makes those forcesunite. 

'Ennuyé?' I asked. Indeed he never is. How could he be when Pleasurehangs constantly upon his arm! It is those others, overtaking her onlyafter arduous chase, breathless and footsore, who quickly sicken of hercompany, and fall fainting at her feet. And for me, shod neither withrank nor riches, what folly to join the chase! I began to see how smalla thing it were to sacrifice those external 'experiences, ' so dear tothe heart of Pater, by a rigid, complex civilisation made so hard togain. They gave nothing but lassitude to those who had gained themthrough suffering. Even to the kings and princes, who so easily gainedthem, what did they yield besides themselves? I do not suppose that, ifwe were invited to give authenticated instances of intelligence on thepart of our royal pets, we could fill half a column of the Spectator. Infact, their lives are so full they have no time for thought, the highestenergy of man. Now, it was to thought that my life should be dedicated. Action, apart from its absorption of time, would war otherwise againstthe pleasures of intellect, which, for me, meant mainly the pleasuresof imagination. It is only (this is a platitude) the things one has notdone, the faces or places one has not seen, or seen but darkly, thathave charm. It is only mystery--such mystery as besets the eyes ofchildren--that makes things superb. I thought of the voluptuaries Ihad known--they seemed so sad, so ascetic almost, like poor pilgrims, raising their eyes never or ever gazing at the moon of tarnishedendeavour. I thought of the round, insouciant faces of the monks atwhose monastery I once broke bread, and how their eyes sparkled whenthey 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, knowno 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 notattempt to combine both kinds, as Pater seemed to fancy a man might. Iwould make myself master of some small area of physical life, a life ofquiet, monotonous simplicity, exempt from all outer disturbance. I wouldshield my body from the world that my mind might range over it, not hurtnor fettered. As yet, however, I was in my first year at Oxford. Therewere many reasons that I should stay there and take my degree, reasonsthat 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 nolonger. I have been casting my eye over the suburbs of London. I havetaken a most pleasant little villa in ----ham, and here I shall make myhome. Here there is no traffic, no harvest. Those of the inhabitantswho do anything go away each morning and do it elsewhere. Here no vitalforces unite. Nothing happens here. The days and the months will pass byme, bringing their sure recurrence of quiet events. In the spring-timeI shall look out from my window and see the laburnum flowering in thelittle front garden. In summer cool syrups will come for me from thegrocer's shop. Autumn will make the boughs of my mountain-ash scarlet, and, later, the asbestos in my grate will put forth its blossoms offlame. The infrequent cart of Buszard or Mudie will pass my window atall seasons. Nor will this be all. I shall have friends. Next door, there is a retired military man who has offered, in a most neighbourlyway, to lend me his copy of the Times. On the other side of my houselives 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 illconcealed by the neat waterproof that overspread her evening dress. Some day it may be. .. But I anticipate. These things will be but the cosyaccompaniment of my days. For I shall contemplate the world. 

I shall look forth from my window, the laburnum and the mountain-ashbecoming mere silhouettes in the foreground of my vision. I shall lookforth and, in nay remoteness, appreciate the distant pageant of theworld. Humanity will range itself in the columns of my morning paper. Nopulse of life will escape me. The strife of politics, the intriguing ofcourts, the wreck of great vessels, wars, dramas, earthquakes, national griefs or joys; the strange sequels to divorces, even, and themysterious suicides of land-agents at Ipswich--in all such phenomena Ishall steep my exhaurient mind. Delicias quoque bibliothecae experiar. Tragedy, comedy, chivalry, philosophy will be mine. I shall listen totheir music perpetually and their colours will dance before my eyes. Ishall soar from terraces of stone upon dragons with shining wingsand make war upon Olympus. From the peaks of hills I shall swoop intorecondite valleys and drive the pigmies, shrieking little curses, totheir caverns. It may be my whim to wander through infinite parks wherethe deer lie under the clustering shadow of their antlers and fleelightly over the grass; to whisper with white prophets under the elms orbind a child with a daisy-chain or, with a lady, thread my way throughthe acacias. I shall swim down rivers into the sea and outstrip allships. Unhindered I shall penetrate all sanctuaries and snatch thesecrets of every dim confessional. 

Yes! among books that charm, and give wings to the mind, will my days bespent. I shall be ever absorbing the things great men have written; withsuch experience I will charge my mind to the full. Nor will I try togive anything in return. Once, in the delusion that Art, loving therecluse, would make his life happy, I wrote a little for a yellowquarterly and had that succès de fiasco which is always given to a youngwriter of talent. But the stress of creation soon overwhelmed me. OnlyArt with a capital H gives any consolations to her henchmen. And I, whocrave no knighthood, shall write no more. I shall write no more. AlreadyI feel myself to be a trifle outmoded. I belong to the Beardsley period. Younger men, with months of activity before them, with fresher schemesand notions, with newer enthusiasm, have pressed forward since then. Cedo junioribus. Indeed, I stand aside with no regret. For to beoutmoded is to be a classic, if one has written well. I have acceded tothe 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 cannotplead as palliation for any imperfections that may be discovered inthis, that it is the work of a 'prentice hand. Difficult as I found myself-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'sworks without making it in some sense a biography--and indeed, in theminds of not a few people, I have found a delusion that the one isidentical with the other. 

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

'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 suchnotable reformers as Aubrey Beardsley and Max Beerbohm is a coincidenceto which no antiquary has previously drawn attention. Is it possible toover-estimate the influence of these two men in the art and literatureof the century?

Like two other great essayists, Addison and Steele, Mr. Beerbohm waseducated 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 completedduring his five years' sojourn there. There are still extant a fewcopies of his satire, in Latin elegiacs, called Beccerius, privatelyprinted at the suggestion of Mr. A. H. Tod, his form-master. The writerhas said 'Let it lie, ' however, and in such a matter the author's wishshould surely be regarded. I have myself been unable to obtain a sightof a copy, but a more fortunate friend has furnished me with a carefuldescription of the opusculum, which I print in its place in thebibliography. 

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

I am aware that he contributed to The Clown and other undergraduatejournals: also that he was a member of the Myrmidons' Club. It wasduring his residence at Oxford that his famous treatise on Cosmeticsappeared in the pages of an important London Quarterly, sets of whichare still occasionally to be found in booksellers' catalogues at a highprice, though the American millionaire collector has made it one of therarest of finds. These were the days of his youth, the golden age of'decadence. ' For is not decadence merely a fin de siècle literary termsynonymous with the 'sowing his wild oats' of our grandfathers? a phrasestill 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 whoappeared as the champion of artifice. A contemporary, one Richard LeGallienne, an eminent Pose Fancier, has committed himself somewhere tothe statement that 'The bravest men that ever trod this planet have worncorsets. '

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

Attended by his half-brother, Mr. Tree, Mrs. Tree and a numeroustheatrical 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 hewas interviewed in many of the newspapers of the States. He returned, reinfecta, to the land of his birth, three months later. 

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

The materials for this collection were drawn, with the courteousacquiescence 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) andThe Unicorn, that he might inlay them in the First Essay, of whosescheme they are really a part. The Third Essay he re-wrote. The rest hecarefully revised, and to some he gave new names. 

Although it was my privilege on one occasion to meet Mr. Beerbohm--atfive-o'clock tea--when advancing years, powerless to rob him of oneshade of his wonderful urbanity, had nevertheless imprinted evidence oftheir flight in the pathetic stoop, and the low melancholy voice of onewho, though resigned, yet yearns for the happier past, I feel thattoo precise a description of his personal appearance would savour ofimpertinence. The curious, on this point, I must refer to Mr. Sickert'sand Mr. Rothenstein's portraits, which I hear that Mr. Lionel Cust isdesirous 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 begladly incorporated in future editions. 

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

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. Abitter cry of complaint against the dulness of the school paper. [Notreprinted. ]

[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 orprinter'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. ACaricature. [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. SirWm. Harcourt). Pall Mall Budget, July 5, 1894. Two Caricatures. [Notreprinted. 

Two Eminent Actors (Mr. Beerbohm Tree and Mr. Edward Terry). Pall MallBudget, 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, 'Therés 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 theFourth. ' A parody of this appeared under the title of 'A Phalse Note onGeorge 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. CourticePounds. 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, ' byMax 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 beenreprinted 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 havebeen 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 hasbeen 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;. [Notreprinted. 

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. [Notreprinted. 

An Evening of Peculiar Delirium. The Sketch, July 24, 1895. [Notreprinted. 

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

Notes in Foppery. The Unicorn, Sept. 25, 1895. The above have beenreprinted with additions and alterations in 'The Works, ' under the titleof '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 byMax 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 'TheWorks. '

De Natura Barbatulorum. The Chap-Book, Feb. 15, 1896, pp. 305-312. Theabove 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 byMax Beerbohm. The Savoy, No. 2, April 1896, p. 161. 

PERSONALIA. 

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

A few words with Mr. Max Beerbohm. (An interview by Ada Leverson. ) TheSketch, 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 residenceat 19 Hyde Park Place, formerly the residence of another well-knownhistorian--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. Part6. 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.