Chapter I: Fin De Siècle--1890–1900

In the year 1895 Max Beerbohm announced, how whimsically and how ironically it is not necessary to consider, that he felt himself a trifle outmoded. “I belong to the Beardsley period,” he said. The Eighteen Nineties were then at their meridian; but it was already the afternoon of the Beardsley period. That very year Aubrey Beardsley’s strange black and white masses and strong delicate lines disappeared from _The Yellow Book_, and he only contributed to the first few numbers of _The Savoy_, which began in 1896. Fatal disease was overtaking him, and remorse. Aubrey Beardsley actually abandoned his period in the evening of its brief day, and when he died, in 1898, the Beardsley period had almost become a memory. But, after all, Aubrey Beardsley was but an incident of the Eighteen Nineties, and only relatively a significant incident. He was but one expression of _fin de siècle_ daring, of a bizarre and often exotic courage, prevalent at the time and connected but indirectly, and often negatively, with some of the most vital movements of a decade which was singularly rich in ideas, personal genius and social will. Aubrey Beardsley crowded the vision of the period by the peculiarity of his art rather than by any need there was of that art to make the period complete. He was, therefore, not a necessity of the Eighteen Nineties, although his appearance in the decade was inevitable; indeed he was so essentially _fin de siècle_ that one can say of him with more confidence than of any other artist of the decade that his appearance at any other time would have been inopportune.

The Eighteen Nineties were so tolerant of novelty in art and ideas that it would seem as though the declining century wished to make amends for several decades of intellectual and artistic monotony. It may indeed be something more than coincidence that placed this decade at the close of a century, and _fin de siècle_ may have been at one and the same time a swan song and a deathbed repentance. As a matter of fact, a quickening of life during the last years of a century is not without parallel. The preceding century closed with the French Revolution and the First Consulate of Napoleon, and the sixteenth century closed with the destruction of the Armada and the appearance of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Spenser, Christopher Marlowe and Francis Bacon; whilst the close of the fifteenth century saw the Revival of Learning, and the discovery of America by Columbus and of Newfoundland by Cabot. One cannot avoid the temptation to speculate on the meaning of such _fin de siècle_ occurrences, for we are actually made more conscious of our standing towards time by the approaching demise of a century, just as we are made conscious of our own ages on birthday anniversaries and New Year’s Eve. And it is at least thinkable that as we are certainly moved in the latter circumstances to pull ourselves together, as it were, even if the effort be only an instinctive attempt to find in action forgetfulness of the flight of time; so it is equally thinkable that a similar but racial instinct towards unique activity may come about at so impressive a period as the close of a century. But, whatever the cause, the last decade of the last century was, in spite of its many extravagances, a renascent period, characterised by much mental activity and a quickening of the imagination, combined with pride of material prosperity, conquest and imperial expansion, as well as the desire for social service and a fuller communal and personal life.

The Yellow Book
An Illustrated Quarterly

Volume 1 April 1894

London: Elkin Mathews & John Lane
Boston: Copeland & Day

Price
_5_/-
Net

COVER DESIGN OF _THE YELLOW BOOK_, VOLUME I

_By Aubrey Beardsley_]

Max Nordau, the Jeremiah of the period, linked up his famous attack on what were called “_fin de siècle_ tendencies” with certain traditional beliefs in the evil destiny of the closure of centuries. “The disposition of the times is curiously confused,” he said; “a compound of feverish restlessness and blunted discouragement, of fearful presage and hang-dog renunciation. The prevalent feeling is that of imminent perdition and extinction. _Fin de siècle_ is at once a confession and a complaint. The old northern faith contained the fearsome doctrine of the Dusk of the Gods. In our days there have arisen in more highly developed minds vague qualms of the Dusk of the Nations, in which all suns and all stars are gradually waning, and mankind with all its institutions and creations is perishing in the midst of a dying world.” All of which sounds very hectic and hysterical now, nearly twenty years after it was first written, when many of the writers and artists he condemned have become harmless classics, and some almost forgotten. But it is interesting to remember Nordau’s words, because they are an example of the very liveliness of a period which was equally lively in making or marring itself. The Eighteen Nineties, however, were not entirely decadent and hopeless; and even their decadence was often decadence only in name, for much of the genius denounced by Max Nordau as degeneration was a sane and healthy expression of a vitality which, as it is not difficult to show, would have been better named regeneration.

At the same time the fact must not be overlooked that much of the vitality of the period, much even of its effective vitality, was destructive of ideas and conventions which we had come to look upon as more or less permanent; and one cannot help feeling, at this distance, that not a little of _fin de siècle_ attractiveness was the result of abandonment due to internal chaos. But this is no cause for condemnation on our part, still less for self-complacency; for, as we have been told by Friedrich Nietzsche, himself a half-felt motive force, in this country at least, behind the tendencies of the times: “Unless you have chaos within you cannot give birth to a dancing star.” More than one dancing star swam into our ken in the last decade of the nineteenth century, and the proof of the regenerative powers of the period are to be found most obviously, but perhaps even more certainly, if not quite so plainly, in the fact that those who were most allied with its moods and whims were not only conscious of the fact, but in some cases capable of looking at themselves and laughing. _Fin de siècle_ was a pose as well as a fact, a point not realised by Nordau. John Davidson, among others, was able to smile at its extravagances, and in _Earl Lavender_, his burlesque novel of the decadence, one of the characters, a garrulous Cockney dame with a smattering of French, reveals the existence of power to cast what Meredith would have called “the oblique ray” upon the doings of the time. “It’s _fang-de-seeaycle_ that does it, my dear,” says this lady, “and education, and reading French.”

It is obvious, then, that people felt they were living amid changes and struggles, intellectual, social and spiritual, and the interpreters of the hour--the publicists, journalists and popular purveyors of ideas of all kinds--did not fail to make a sort of traffic in the spirit of the times. Anything strange or uncanny, anything which savoured of freak and perversity, was swiftly labelled _fin de siècle_, and given a certain topical prominence. The term became a fashion, and writers vied one with another as to which should apply it most aptly. At least one writer emphasised the phrase in an attempt to stigmatise it. “Observe,” wrote Max Beerbohm, “that I write no fool’s prattle about _le fin de siècle_.” And Max Nordau gives a useful list illustrating the manner in which the term was used in the country of its birth. A king who abdicates but retains by agreement certain political rights, which he afterwards sells to his country to provide means for the liquidation of debts contracted by play in Paris, is a _fin de siècle_ king. The police official who removes a piece of the skin of the murderer Pranzini after execution and has it tanned and made into a cigar-case, is a _fin de siècle_ official. An American wedding ceremony held in a gasworks and the subsequent honeymoon in a balloon is a _fin de siècle_ wedding. A schoolboy who, on passing the gaol where his father is imprisoned for embezzlement, remarks to a chum: “Look, that’s the governor’s school,” is a _fin de siècle_ son. These are only a few from among innumerable examples illustrating the liveliness of the people of the Nineties to their hour and its characteristics. A further indication of the way in which the phrase permeated the mind of the period is found in its frequent occurrence in the books and essays of the day. It appears fittingly enough in Oscar Wilde’s _The Picture of Dorian Gray_, that typical book of the period, as a reflection upon an epigram afterwards used in _A Woman of No Importance_. Lady Narborough is saying:

“‘If we women did not love you for your defects, where would you
all be? Not one of you would ever be married. You would be a set
of unfortunate bachelors. Not, however, that that would alter
you much. Nowadays all the married men live like bachelors and
all the bachelors like married men!’

“‘_Fin de siècle_,’ murmured Sir Henry.

“‘_Fin du globe_,’ answered his hostess.

“‘I wish it were _fin du globe_,’ said Dorian, with a sigh.
‘Life is a great disappointment.’”

A reviewer of the novel, in _The Speaker_ of 5th July 1890, describes Lord Henry Wotton as “an extremely _fin-de-siècle_ gentleman.” And another book of the period, _Baron Verdigris: A Romance of the Reversed Direction_, by Jocelyn Quilp, issued in 1894, with a frontispiece by Beardsley, is prefaced by the following inscription:--

_This Book is Dedicated equally to Fin-de-Siècleism, the
Sensational Novel, and the Conventional Drawing-Room Ballad._

But side by side with the prevailing use of the phrase, and running its popularity very close, came the adjective “new”; it was applied in much the same way to indicate extreme modernity. Like _fin de siècle_, it hailed from France, and, after its original application in the phrase _l’art nouveau_ had done considerable service in this country as a prefix to modern pictures, dresses and designs, our publicists discovered that other things were equally worthy of the useful adjective. Grant Allen wrote of “The New Hedonism”; H. D. Traill, of “The New Fiction,” opening his essay with the words: “Not to be _new_ is, in these days, to be nothing.” In August 1892 William Sharp designed and produced one number, and one only, of _The Pagan Review_, which was written entirely by himself under various pseudonyms, to promote the “New Paganism,” described as “a potent leaven in the yeast of the ‘younger generation,’ and which was concerned only with the _new_ presentment of things.” And again, in the famous attack on _The Picture of Dorian Gray_, in the _St James’s Gazette_, on the first appearance of the novel in the pages of _Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine_ for July 1890, reference is made to “The New Voluptuousness” which “always leads up to bloodshedding.” Oscar Wilde himself wrote on “The New Remorse,” in _The Spirit Lamp_, in 1892. The range of the adjective gradually spread until it embraced the ideas of the whole period, and we find innumerable references to the “New Spirit,” the “New Humour,” the “New Realism,” the “New Hedonism,” the “New Drama,” the “New Unionism,” the “New Party,” and the “New Woman.” The popular, and what we should now call “significant,” adjective was adopted by publishers of periodicals, and during the decade there was _The New Age_, a penny weekly with a humanitarian and radical objective, which, after many vicissitudes and various editorial changes, still survives; while William Ernest Henley, coming under the spell of fashion and carrying his modernism from the eighties, translated _The National Observer_ into _The New Review_.

A decade which was so conscious of its own novelty and originality must have had some characteristics at least which distinguished it from the immediately preceding decade, if not from all preceding decades. The former is certainly true: the Eighteen Nineties possessed characteristics which were at once distinctive and arresting, but I doubt whether its sense of its own novelty was based in changes which lacked their counterparts in most of the decades of the nineteenth century--pre-eminently a century of change. The period was as certainly a period of decadence as it was a period of renaissance. The decadence was to be seen in a perverse and finicking glorification of the fine arts and mere artistic virtuosity on the one hand, and a militant commercial movement on the other. The one produced _The Yellow Book_ and the literature and art of “fine shades,” with their persistent search for the “unique word” and the “brilliant” expression; the other produced the “Yellow Press,” the boom in “Kaffirs,” the Jameson Raid, the Boer War and the enthronement of the South African plutocrat in Park Lane. But this decadent side of the Nineties must not be looked upon as wholly evil. Its separation from a movement obviously ascendant in spirit is not altogether admissible. The two tendencies worked together, and it is only for the sake of historical analysis that I adopt the method of segregation. Taken thus the decadence reveals qualities which, even if nothing more than “the soul of goodness in things evil,” are at times surprisingly excellent. The decadent vision of an Aubrey Beardsley introduced a new sense of rhythm into black and white art, just as the, on the whole, trivial masters of “fine shades,” with their peacock phrases, helped us towards a newer, more sensitive and more elastic prose form. The “Yellow Press,” with all its extravagances, was at least alive to the desires of the crowd, and the reverse of dull in the presentment of its views; and if it gave Demos the superficial ideas he liked, it was equally prepared to supply a better article when the demand arose. And, withal, a wider publicity was given to thought-provoking ideas and imaginative themes, although adjusted, and often very much adjusted, to the average taste, than had hitherto been possible. As for the “New Park Lane” and the “New” aristocracy, they in their garish abandonment helped us to apply the abstract science of economics to life, thus probably preparing the path for the Super-tax and other so-called “Socialistic” legislation of to-day. But apologies for the decadent side of the period do not complete the story of the renaissance of the Nineties. This latter was more real than the much-advertised decadence, and as time goes on it will prove itself to have been more enduring. The atmosphere of the Eighteen Nineties was alert with new ideas which sought to find expression in the average national life. If luxury had its art and its traffic, so had a saner and more balanced social consciousness. If the one demanded freedom for an individual expression tending towards degeneration and perversion, the other demanded a freedom which should give the common man opportunities for the redemption of himself and his kind. Side by side with the _poseur_ worked the reformer, urged on by the revolutionist. There were demands for culture and social redemption. A wave of transcendentalism swept the country, drawing with it the brighter intelligences of all classes; but it was not remote, it was of the earth and of the common life and hour, seeking the immediate regeneration of society by the abolition of such social evils as poverty and overwork, and the meanness, ugliness, ill-health and commercial rapacity which characterised so much of modern life. The vitality of this awakening of the social consciousness is proved by its extravagances. In the main it worked persistently, cheerfully and with that spirit of compromise dear to the English temperament, as can be seen by a reference to the pages of _The Daily Chronicle_, under the editorship of A. E. Fletcher; _The Star_, under T. P. O’Connor; _The New Age_ of the period; Robert Blatchford’s _Clarion_, and W. T. Stead’s _Review of Reviews_. But now and then the cup of social zeal was too full; it overflowed, and one heard of the bomb of over-zealous anarchist; of the revolt of righteously impatient starvelings among the newly awakened proletariat, and of the purely negative militancy of the “Nonconformist conscience,” which used the newborn and enthusiastic London County Council and Mrs Ormiston Chant as the instruments of a moral crusade among West End music halls, then only just discovered as more or less harmless and instructive places of entertainment by those guardians of British respectability--the lower middle classes.

In all these things the Eighteen Nineties were unique only in method and in the emphasis they gave to certain circumstances and ideas. The Eighteen Eighties and the late Seventies had been even more “artistic” than the Nineties, and the preceding decade had also its riots and revolutionary organisations. Max Beerbohm, in a delightful essay which could only have been written in the Nineties and could only have appeared in _The Yellow Book_, has given us with subtle humour and satire a little history, not entirely free from caricature, of the Eighties. In the essay called “1880” he opens, as it were, a window in the house of the Nineties through which we get a fair glimpse of the immediate past. He says:

“Beauty had existed long before 1880. It was Mr Oscar Wilde
who managed her début. To study the period is to admit that
to him was due no small part of the social vogue that Beauty
began to enjoy. Fired by his fervid words, men and women hurled
their mahogany into the streets and ransacked the curio-shops
for the furniture of Annish days. Dados arose upon every wall,
sunflowers and the feathers of peacocks curved in every corner,
tea grew quite cold while the guests were praising the Willow
Pattern of its cup. A few fashionable women even dressed
themselves in sinuous draperies and unheard-of greens. Into
whatsoever ballroom you went, you would surely find, among the
women in tiaras and the fops and the distinguished foreigners,
half a score of comely ragamuffins in velveteen, murmuring
sonnets, posturing, waving their hands. Beauty was sought in
the most unlikely places. Young painters found her robed in the
fogs, and bank clerks, versed in the writings of Mr Hawmerton,
were heard to declare, as they sped home from the City, that
the underground railway was beautiful from London Bridge to
Westminster, but not from Sloane Square to Notting Hill Gate.
Æstheticism (for so they named the movement) did indeed permeate
in a manner all classes. But it was to the _haut monde_
that its primary appeal was made. The sacred emblems of
Chelsea were sold in the fashionable toy-shops, its reverently
chanted creeds became the patter of the _boudoirs_. The
old Grosvenor Gallery, that stronghold of the few, was verily
invaded. Never was such a fusion of delighted folk as at its
private views. There was Robert Browning, the philosopher,
doffing his hat with a courtly sweep to more than one duchess.
There, too, was Theo Marzials, poet and eccentric, and Charles
Colnaghi, the hero of a hundred teafights, and young Brookfield,
the comedian, and many another good fellow. My Lord of Dudley,
the virtuoso, came there, leaning for support upon the arm of
his fair young wife. Disraeli, with the lustreless eyes and face
like some seamed Hebraic parchment, came also, and whispered
behind his hand to the faithful Corry. And Walter Sickert spread
the latest _mot_ of ‘the Master,’ who, with monocle, cane
and tilted hat, flashed through the gay mob anon.”

There is also ample evidence of the social earnestness of the preceding decade in memories of the dock strike of 1889, which brought John Burns and Tom Mann to the front as the “new” labour leaders, and of the riots of 1886, which culminated in a free speech demonstration in Trafalgar Square on Sunday, 13th November 1887, when the Life Guards were called out, and during the clearing of the Square a young man lost his life. The first British Socialist organisation of any note, the Social Democratic Federation, later called the Social Democratic Party, and more recently merged in the British Socialist Party, was formed by Henry Mayers Hyndman, who had for chief supporter William Morris, in 1881. Two years later the Fabian Society was founded, and this organisation drew to its ranks the middle-class “intellectuals,” who were beginning to interest themselves in Socialism. These included Sidney Webb, Bernard Shaw, Sydney Olivier, Graham Wallas, Annie Besant, Hubert Bland, Frank Podmore, Stewart Headlam and others who had made, or were about to make, their mark in various branches of the intellectual life. It was these various Socialist activities which made the formation of the Independent Labour Party a possibility in 1892, and the return of Keir Hardie, its first representative, to Parliament, in the same year.

But the chief characteristics of the Eighteen Nineties proper, although dovetailed into the preceding decade, may be indicated roughly under three heads. These were the so-called Decadence; the introduction of a Sense of Fact into literature and art; and the development of a Transcendental View of Social Life. But again, it must not be assumed that these characteristics were always separate. To a very considerable extent they overlapped, even where they were not necessarily interdependent. Oscar Wilde, for instance, bridged the chasm between the self-contained individualism of the decadents and the communal aspirations of the more advanced social revolutionaries. His essay, _The Soul of Man under Socialism_, has been acclaimed by recognised upholders of Socialism. And even his earlier æstheticism (which belonged to the Eighties) was an attempt to apply the idea of art to mundane affairs. Bernard Shaw, rationalist and anti-romantic apostle of the sense of fact, openly used art to provoke thought and to give it a social, as distinct from an individualist, aim; just as other and more direct literary realists, such as Emile Zola and Henrik Ibsen, had done before him, either avowedly or by implication. The more typical realists of the Nineties, George Gissing and George Moore, seem to be devoid of deliberate social purpose, but the prevalent didacticism of the period is strikingly pronounced in the work of H. G. Wells, who has contrived better than any other writer of his time to introduce reality into his novels without jeopardising romance, to hammer home a theory of morality without delimiting his art. But apart from such obvious resemblances between types of _fin de siècle_ genius, the popular idea of the period looked upon one phase of its thought as no less characteristic than another. The adjective “new” as an indicator of popular consciousness of what was happening, was, as we have seen, applied indifferently to all kinds of human activity, from art and morals to humour and Trade Unionism.

There is no clearer example of the intimate relationship between what might have been called the degenerate notions of the period and those which are admittedly regenerate, than a comparison of the Epicurean ideas in such strikingly different works as Oscar Wilde’s _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ and Grant Allen’s essay on “The New Hedonism,” which appeared in _The Fortnightly Review_ of March 1894. Oscar Wilde says:

“Yes: there was to be, as Lord Henry had prophesied, a new
Hedonism that was to recreate life, and to save it from that
harsh, uncomely Puritanism that is having, in our own day, its
curious revival. It was to have its service of the intellect,
certainly; yet it was never to accept any theory or system
that would involve the sacrifice of any mode of passionate
experience. Its aim, indeed, was to be experience itself, and
not the fruits of experience, sweet or bitter as they might be.
Of the asceticism that deadens the senses, as of the vulgar
profligacy that dulls them, it was to know nothing. But it was
to teach man to concentrate himself upon the moments of a life
that is itself but a moment.”

Here we have a kind of self-culture by the constant variation of experiences, mostly passionate, with little if any reference to the rest of humanity. In a sense it is not a new Hedonism at all, but a Hedonism which had existed from time immemorial, although it found its way into Oscar Wilde’s novel by the aid of two modern books. One of these, the _À Rebours_ of Joris Karl Huysmans, may be said to contain the apotheosis of the _fin de siècle_ spirit; the other, _The Renaissance_, by Walter Pater, containing a famous passage which became the precious gospel of the Æsthetic Movement of the Seventies and Eighties. It was new, however, in so far as it reacted against the “Nonconformist conscience” of the moment. But that it was not the only “New” Hedonism may be realised by reference to Grant Allen’s essay, which is little more than a veiled piece of Socialist propaganda. The central idea of this sociological Hedonism is shown in the following extract:--

“Self-development, on the contrary, is an aim for all--an
aim which will make all stronger, and saner, and wiser, and
better. To be sound in wind and limb; to be healthy of body
and mind; to be educated, to be emancipated, to be free, to
be beautiful--these things are ends towards which all should
strain, and by attaining which all are happier in themselves,
and more useful to others. That is the central idea of the new
hedonism. We see clearly that it is good for every man among us
that he and every other man should be as tall, as strong, as
well knit, as supple, as wholesome, as effective, as free from
vice or defect as possible. We see clearly that it is his first
duty to make his own muscles, his own organs, his own bodily
functions, as perfect as he can make them, and to transmit
them in like perfection, unspoiled, to his descendants. We see
clearly that it is good for every woman among us that she and
every other woman should be as physically developed and as
finely equipped for her place as mother as it is possible to
make herself. We see that is good for every woman that there
should be such men, and for every man that there should be such
women. We see it is good for every child that it should be born
of such a father and such a mother. We see that to prepare
ourselves for the duties of paternity and maternity, by making
ourselves as vigorous and healthful as we can be, is a duty
we all owe to our children unborn and to one another. We see
that to sacrifice ourselves, and inferentially them, is not a
thing good in itself, but rather a thing to be avoided where
practicable, and only to be recommended in the last resort as an
unsatisfactory means of escape from graver evils. We see that
each man and each woman holds his virility and her femininity in
trust for humanity, and that to play fast and loose with either,
at the bidding of priests or the behest of Puritans, is a bad
thing in itself, and is fraught with danger for the State and
for future generations.”

The intellectual, imaginative and spiritual activities of the Eighteen Nineties are concerned mainly with the idea of social life or, if you will, of culture; and the individual and social phases of that culture are broadly represented by the above quotations. For that reason alone the period is interesting apart from any achievements in art or science or statecraft. It is interesting because it was a time when people went about frankly and cheerfully endeavouring to solve the question “How to Live.” From one point of view such an employment suggests the bewilderment of a degenerate world, and it would seem entirely to justify the lamentations of Max Nordau; but those who lived through the Nineties as young men and women will remember that this search for a new mode of life was anything but melancholy or diseased. The very pursuit was a mode of life sufficiently joyful to make life worth living. But in addition there was the feeling of expectancy, born not alone of a mere toying with novel ideas, but born equally of a determination to taste new sensation, even at some personal risk, for the sake of life and growth.

“A great creative period is at hand,” wrote William Sharp, in his preface to _Vistas_; “probably a great dramatic epoch. But what will for one thing differentiate it from any predecessor is the new complexity, the new subtlety, in apprehension, in formative conception, in imaginative rendering.”

It was an era of hope and action. People thought anything might happen; and, for the young, any happening sufficiently new was good. Little of the older sentimentalism survived among the modernists; those who were of the period desired to be in the movement, and not mere spectators. It was a time of experiment. Dissatisfied with the long ages of convention and action which arose out of precedent, many set about testing life for themselves. The new man wished to be himself, the new woman threatened to live her own life. The snapping of apron-strings caused consternation in many a decent household, as young men and maidens were suddenly inspired to develop their own souls and personalities. Never, indeed, was there a time when the young were so young or the old so old. No family, were its record for solid British respectability established on no matter how secure a basis, was immune from new ideas; and if the bourgeoisie of the Eighteen Eighties were inspired to throw their mahogany into the streets, as we have been assured they were by Max Beerbohm, their successors of the Eighteen Nineties were barely constrained from doing the same with their most cherished principles. Decadent minor poets sprang up in the most unexpected places. The staidest of Nonconformist circles begot strange, pale youths with abundant hair, whose abandoned thoughts expressed themselves in “purple patches” of prose, and whose sole aim in life was to live “passionately” in a succession of “scarlet moments.” Life-tasting was the fashion, and the rising generation felt as though it were stepping out of the cages of convention and custom into a freedom full of tremendous possibilities.

There were misgivings in more directions than one, but these had small effect upon the spirit of the first half of the decade. The experimental life went on in a swirl of song and dialectics. Ideas were in the air. Things were not what they seemed, and there were visions about. The Eighteen Nineties was the decade of a thousand “movements.” People said it was a “period of transition,” and they were convinced that they were passing not only from one social system to another, but from one morality to another, from one culture to another, and from one religion to a dozen or none! But as a matter of fact there was no concerted action. Everybody, mentally and emotionally, was running about in a hundred different directions. There was so much to think about, so much to discuss, so much to see. “A New Spirit of Pleasure is abroad amongst us,” observed Richard Le Gallienne, “and one that blows from no mere coteries of hedonistic philosophers, but comes on the four winds.” The old sobriety of mind had left our shores, and we changed from a stolid into a volatile nation. At this time the provinces saw the birth of a new type of music hall, the “Palace of Varieties,” with two performances a night, and we began to amuse ourselves.

Our new-found freedom seemed to find just the expression it needed in the abandoned nonsense chorus of _Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay!_[1] which, lit at the red skirts of Lottie Collins, spread like a dancing flame through the land, obsessing the minds of young and old, gay and sedate, until it became a veritable song-pest, provoking satires even upon itself in the music halls of its origin. No song ever took a people in quite the same way; from 1892 to 1896 it affected the country like an epidemic; and during those years it would seem to have been the absurd _ça ira_ of a generation bent upon kicking over the traces. Even to this day one can hear the song in the streets of Boulogne and Dieppe, where the urchins croak it for the benefit of the English visitor, under the firm conviction that it is the British National Anthem, and in hopes that the patriotic Britishers will reward their efforts with _petit sous_.[2]

The old dim and dowdy chop-houses and taverns also changed with our new mood, and they were replaced by larger and brighter restaurants and “tea shops,” daintier food and orchestras, and we extended the habit of dining out, and mixing afternoon tea with shopping.

The “safety” bicycle was invented, and it took its place as an instrument of the “new” freedom as we glided forth in our thousands into the country, accompanied by our sisters and sweethearts and wives, who sometimes abandoned skirts for neat knickerbocker suits. “The world is divided into two classes,” said a wit of the period, “those who ride bicycles and those who don’t.” But the great novelty was the woman cyclist, the New Woman _rampant_, but she was sometimes very charming also, and we immortalised her in our Palaces of Varieties:

“_Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do,
I’m half crazy all for the love of you!
It won’t be a stylish marriage,
I can’t afford a carriage,
But you’ll look neat,
Upon the seat
Of a bicycle made for two._”