The Puppet Show of Memory

by Maurice Baring

Aubrey Beardsley was just becoming known as an artist, and we wrote to him and asked him to design a cover, never thinking he would consent to do so. He did, for the modest sum of ten guineas, and many people thought it was a clever parody of his draughtsmanship.

At Trinity, Carr-Bosanquet was the shining light of the Decemviri Debating Society. At Eton he had edited the Parachute, which was far the best schoolboy periodical that had appeared there for years, and had written, in collaboration with two other boys, a book called Seven Summers, about Eton, which was afterwards withdrawn from circulation because for some reason or other the authorities objected to it. Next to A Day of my Life at Eton it is the best book about Eton life that has ever been written, and the only book of its kind. It certainly ought to be republished. The curious thing is that the objections to it, which to the lay mind are not perceptible (for a more harmless book was never written), were only made after it had been published for some time.

Carr-Bosanquet used often to contribute poems of a light kind about topical events to the Eton Chronicle, and at Cambridge he wrote as wittily as he talked and spoke. He had rather a dry, kind sense of humour, saltlike sense, and an Attic wit, which pervaded his talk, his speeches, his finished and scholarly verse. We thought he was certain to be a bright star in English literature, a successor to Praed and Calverley, and perhaps to Charles Lamb; but his career was distinguished in another line—archæology—and he allowed himself no rival pursuit. Had he opted for literature, and the province of the witty essay and the light rhyme, he certainly could have achieved great things, as he had already done far more than show promise. His performance as far as it went was already mature, finished, and of a high order. There was at Trinity and at King’s at this time, as I suppose there is at all times, a small but highly intellectual world, of which the apex was the mysterious Society of the Apostles, who discussed philosophy in secret. I skirted the fringe of this world, and knew some of its members: Bertrand Russell, the mathematician; Robert Trevelyan, the poet; and others. One day, one of these intellectuals explained to me that I ought not to go to Chapel, as it was setting a bad example. Christianity was exploded, a thing of the past; nobody believed in it really among the young and the advanced, but for the sake of the old-fashioned and the unregenerate I was bidden to set an example of sincerity and courage, and soon the world would follow suit. I remember thinking that although I was much younger in years than these intellectuals, and far inferior in knowledge, brains, and wits, no match for them in argument or in achievement, I was none the less older than they were in a particular kind of experience—the experience that has nothing to do either with the mind, or with knowledge, and that is independent of age, but takes place in the heart, and in which a child may be sometimes more rich than a grown-up person. I do not mean anything sentimental. I am speaking of the experience that comes from having been suddenly constrained to turn round and look at life from a different point of view. So when I heard the intellectuals reason in the manner I have described, I felt for the moment an old person listening to young people. I felt young people must always have talked like that. It was not that I had then any definite religious creed. I seldom went to Chapel, but that was out of laziness. I seldom went to church in London, and never of my own accord.

While I was at Heidelberg the religious tenets which I had kept absolutely intact since childhood, without question and without the shadow of doubt or difficulty, suddenly one day, without outside influence or inward crisis, just dropped away from me. I shed them as easily as a child loses a first tooth. In the winter of 1893, when I came back from Berlin, someone asked me why I didn’t go to church. I said it was because I didn’t believe in a Christian faith, and that if I were ever to again I would be a Catholic. That seemed to me the only logical and indeed the inevitable consequence of such a belief. In spite of this, dogmatic disbelief was to me always an intolerable thing, and when I heard the intellectuals talk in the manner I have described, I used to feel that people like Dr. Johnson had known better than they, but that in his day it was probable that the young and he himself talked like that; it was one of the privileges of youth. I did not say this, however. I kept my thoughts to myself. I remember my spoken answer being that I did not care if my landlady thought an upright poker placed in front of the fire made it burn or not. If she liked to believe that, it was her affair. I didn’t mind if she worshipped the poker.

At King’s my great friends were Hubert Cornish, Ramsay, who was afterwards Lower Master at Eton, and R⸺ A⸺, the son of a distinguished soldier. A. was the most original of all the undergraduates I knew. He was a real scholar, with the most eclectic and rather austere taste in literature, and a passion for organ music. He was shy and fastidious beyond words. He could not endure being shaved at Cambridge, and used to go up to London twice a week for that purpose. He took no part in any of the clubs or societies. At the same time he was a devoted friend and a fiery patriot. He was so difficult to please about his own work that when he went up for his Tripos and had to do a set of Latin hexameters, he showed up a series of unfinished lines, “pathetic half-lines,” a suggested end of hexameter, a possible beginning, the hint of a cæsura, a few epithets, and here and there an almost perfect line, with a footnote to say “these verses are not meant to scan.” He was a bibliophile, but collected faded second editions and never competed. He had a passionate admiration for Thomas Hardy’s works, and a great deference for the opinion of his friends. One day when he was discussing literature with Hubert Cornish, Hubert said he liked a book which A. disliked. When A. heard this he said gently: “Of course if you like it, Hubert, I like it too.”

This all happened in the period of the ’nineties. When people write about the ’nineties now, which they often do, they seem to me to weave a baseless legend and to create a fantastic world of their own creation. The ’nineties were, from the point of view of art and literature, much like any other period. If you want to know what literary conversation was like in the ’nineties you can hear it any day at the Reform Club. If you compare the articles on literature or art that appeared in the Speaker of 1892-3 with the articles in the New Statesman of 1921, you will find little difference between the two. The difference between the Yellow Book and periodicals of the same kind (The Owl, for instance), which were started years later, was chiefly in the colour of the cover. The fact is there are only a certain number of available writers in London, and whenever a new periodical is started, all the available writers are asked to contribute; so in the Yellow Book you had practically the available writers of the time contributing—Henry James, Edmund Gosse, George Moore, Crackenthorpe, William Watson, John Davidson, John Oliver Hobbes, Vernon Lee, Le Gallienne, Arthur Benson, Arthur Symons, and Max Beerbohm. I think there is seldom any startling difference between the literature of one decade and another. When I was at Cambridge, England was said by the newspapers to be a nest of singing birds; again the same thing was said when the Georgian poets began to publish their work; but the same thing might be said of any epoch. Throughout the whole of English history there never has been a period, as yet, when England was not a nest of singing birds, and when a great quantity of verse, good, bad, and indifferent, was not being poured out. But it was said in the ’nineties that poetry was a paying business; second-hand booksellers were speculating in the first editions of the new poets, just as they do now; and to get the complete works of one poet, who had published little, one had to pay a hundred pounds. A society called the Rhymers’ Club published two books called respectively the Book of the Rhymers’ Club, and the Second Book of the Rhymers’ Club, both of which were anthologies by living authors, and somewhat the same in intention as the Books of Georgian Poetry. Both these books are now rare and sought after by collectors. It is interesting to look at them now, and to look back in general on the poets of that day, and to see what has survived and what has been forgotten. These two anthologies by no means represented the whole of the poetic output and production of the day. They were not comprehensive anthologies of all the living poets, but the manifesto of one small Poetical Club. Taking a general bird’s-eye view of literature and the literary world of that day, this is what you would have noted. Tennyson was just dead. Swinburne was still writing, and published some of the finer poems of his later manner in a volume called Astrophel, in 1894. Stevenson was alive, and had just published The Ebb Tide. Meredith had but lately come into his own, and was hailed by old and young. Tess of the D’Urbervilles had enlarged the public of Thomas Hardy. Robert Bridges was issuing fastidious pamphlets of verse printed by Mr. Beeching at Oxford. Christina Rossetti was alive. Mr. Kipling published what are perhaps his greatest achievements in the short story in Life’s Handicap in 1891, and his Many Inventions came out in 1892. His Barrack Room Ballads were published in 1892. His loud popularity among the public was endorsed by critics such as Henry James, Edmund Gosse, and Andrew Lang. Andrew Lang was still writing “books like Genesis and sometimes for the Daily News,” besides a monthly causerie in Longman’s Magazine, and a weekly causerie in the Illustrated London News. Mrs. Humphry Ward’s David Grieve was published in 1892 and acclaimed by the whole press. Edmund Gosse was collecting and preparing a volume of the verse of his maturity (published in 1894), and once a year produced a volume of delicate and perspicuous prose. Henley was writing patriotic verse and barbed prose in the National Observer, which was full of spirited, scholarly and brilliant writing. Charles Whibley was making a name. Max Beerbohm was making his début. William Watson was discovered as a real new poet, and his “Wordsworth’s Grave,” and his “Lachrymæ Musarum” won praise from the older critics, and attracted, for verse, great attention. He was named as a possible laureate. John Davidson was said to have inspiration and fire, and to have written a fine ballad; Norman Gale’s Country Lyrics were praised; Arthur Benson represented the extreme right of English poetry, and Arthur Symons the extreme left. Wilde had published a play in French, and his Lady Windermere’s Fan was hailed as the best comedy produced on the English stage since Congreve. Pinero had startled London with his Second Mrs. Tanqueray and the discovery of Mrs. Patrick Campbell. In the Speaker Quiller-Couch wrote a weekly causerie, and George Moore put some of his best work in weekly articles on art, and Mr. Walkley some of his wittiest writing in weekly articles on the stage. Henry James was struggling with the stage, and John Oliver Hobbes was making a name as a coiner of epigrams. Harry Cust was editing the Pall Mall Gazette and concocting delightful leaders out of the classics, with fantastic titles. E. F. Benson had published Dodo. Turning from the general to the particular, and to the Book of the Rhymers’ Club, published in 1892, the names of the contributors were: Ernest Dowson, Edwin Ellis, C. A. Greene, Lionel Johnson, Richard le Gallienne, Victor Plarr, Ernest Radford, Ernest Rhys, T. W. Rolleston, Arthur Symons, John Todhunter, and W. B. Yeats. In the second series the same names occur with an additional one—Arthur Cecil Hillier.

A reaction against supposed foreign influences was started and preached, and Richard le Gallienne called his book of verse English Lyrics to accentuate this; but it is difficult to find any trace of this foreign influence in the verse of that day, except in some of the poems of Arthur Symons. When people write of the ’nineties now, they say that the verse of that period is all about pierrots, powder, and patchouli. The reason is perhaps that the most startling feature in the creative art of the period was the genius of Aubrey Beardsley, whose perfect draughtsmanship seemed to be guided by a malignant demon. I have looked through the Books of the Rhymers’ Club carefully, and I cannot find a single allusion to a pierrot, or even to a powder-puff. Here are the titles of some of the subjects: “Carmelite Nuns of Perpetual Adoration”; “Love and Death”; “The Pathfinder”; “The Broken Tryst”; “A Ring’s Secret”; “A Burden of Easter Vigil”; “Father Gilligan”; “In Falmouth Harbour”; “Mothers of Men”; “Sunset in the City”; “Lost”; “To a Breton Beggar”; “Song in the Labour Movement”; “Saint Anthony”; “Lady Macbeth”; “Midsummer Day”; “The Old Shepherd”; “The Night Jar”; “The Song of the Old Mother”; “The First Spring Day”; “An Ode to Spring.” These subjects seem to me singularly like those that have inspired poets of all epochs; it is difficult to detect anything peculiar to the ’nineties in a title such as “The First Spring Day,” or “A Ring’s Secret.”

The first Rhymers’ Book contains Yeats’ exquisite poem on the Lake of Innisfree, and some dignified verse by Lionel Johnson; the second series contains a well-known poem by Ernest Dowson: “I have been faithful to thee, Cynara, in my fashion.” But I think I am right in saying that it was neither Yeats nor Lionel Johnson nor Dowson’s work in these anthologies that attracted the greatest attention, but a lyric of Le Gallienne’s called “What of the Darkness?” which I remember one critic said wiped out Tennyson’s lyrics. Tennyson’s lyrics, however, went on obstinately existing, no doubt so as to give another generation the pleasure of thinking that they had wiped them out. While these singing birds were twittering, I remember one day at Cambridge buying a new book of verse by a man called Francis Thompson. Here, I thought, is another of the hundreds of new poets, but directly I caught sight of the “Hound of Heaven,” I thought to myself “Here is something different.” I remember showing Hubert Cornish a poem called “Daisy,” and saying to him, “Isn’t this very good?” It begins: