FROM THE QUEER AND YELLOW BOOK.
I.—1894
(By Max Mereboom.)
"Linger longer, Lucy,
Linger longer, Loo.
How I'd like to linger longer,
Linger longer, Loo!"—Old Ballad.
Picture by Our Own Yellow-Booky Daubaway Weirdsley, intended as a Puzzle Picture to preface of Juvenile Poems, or as nothing in particular.
I suppose there is no one that has not wished, from Time to Time, that someone else had lived in another Age than his own. I myself have often felt that it would have been nice to live in 1894; to have seen the "Living Pictures" at the old Empire, to have strained my Eyes for a glimpse of Mrs. Patrick Campbell, broken my Cane applauding May Yohé, and listened to the Blue Hungarians while dining, on a Sunday, at that quaint old Tavern the Savoy. At that time the Beauties from New York had not quite lost their Vogue. Christopher Columbus, who discovered the United States, left it to the Prince of Wales to invent their inhabitants: personally, I am more implected with their Botany; and am, indeed, at this moment, engaged in a study of the Trees in America. Much of this remote Period must remain mobled in the Mists of Antiquity, but we know that about then flourished the Sect that was to win for itself the Title of the "Decadents." What exactly this Title signified I suppose no two entomologists will agree. But we may learn from the Caricatures of the day what the Decadents were in outward semblance; from the Lampoons what was their mode of life. Nightly they gathered at any of the Theatres where the plays of Mr. Wilde were being given. Nightly, the stalls were fulfilled by Row upon Row of neatly-curled Fringes surmounting Button-holes of monstrous size. The contrasts in the social Condition of the time fascinate me. I used to know a boy whose mother was actually present at the "first night" of Charley's Aunt, and became enamoured of Mr. Penley. By such links is one Age joined to another!
I should like to have been at a Private View of the "New English Art Club." There was Crotchet, the young Author of the Mauve Camellia; there were Walter Sickert, the veteran R.A.; George Moore, the romanticist; Charles Hawtrey, the tragedian, and many another good fellow. The period of 1894 must have been delicious.
Perhaps in my Study I have fallen so deeply beneath the Spell of the Age, that I have tended to underrate its unimportance. I fancy it was a Sketch of a Lady with a Mask on, playing the piano in a Cornfield, in a low dress, with two lighted Candles, and signed "Aubrey Weirdsley," that first impelled me to research.
But to give an accurate account of the Period would need a far less brilliant Pen than mine; and I look to Jerome K. Jerome and to Mr. Clement Scott.
II.—TOORALOORA. A Fragment.
(By Charing Cross.)
"My hair?" she said. "It touches the ground."
As she spoke, she seized her fringe by the roots and flung it on the floor.
"A marvellous feat for a European," I murmured with some difficulty. "Will you have another drink?"
"Yes," said Tooraloora; "I make it a rule always to get intoxicated in a public-house."
I did not offer her a chair, I flung one at her head. That impulse towards some physical demonstration, that craving for physical contact which attacks us go suddenly with its terrific impulse, and chokes and stifles us, ourselves, beneath it, blinding us to all except itself, rushed upon Tooraloora then: and she landed me one in the eye. Now, this was the moment I had been expecting and dreading, practically, ever since her hand had left my ear the night before—this moment when it should strike me again. I do not mean consciously, but there are a million slight, vague, physical experiences and sensations within us of which the mind remains almost unconscious; and I have no pretensions to physical courage. For a second I felt the colour rise to my face. Every expletive that should have been forgotten, I remembered. My pulses seemed beating as they do in fever, my ears seemed full of sounds, and I felt the cold touch of the policeman's grasp like ice upon my shoulder as a voice murmured, "This means forty shillings or a month."... When we reached the station I flung myself upon the floor, leaning my head upon my hand, the white powder upon my coat still lingered. I seemed to hear Tooraloora murmur, "'E don't know where 'E are!"