REACTION, 1895.
(See the "Daily Chronicle" of August 6.)
Reaction's in the air, and (so to speak)
Its trail is o'er the Chronicle's own pages—
Witness "An Unknown Quantity" this week,
Whose meditative J-pen disengages
De rebus omnibus a keen critique.
Extravagance, and levity, and fads
Have been o'erdone, it seems, since Eighteen-eighty
(Or thereabouts); but, our observer adds,
John Bull has this year grown more wise and weighty,
Less "new," less yellow—and has chucked the Rads.
Reaction's the reverse of retrograde,
If we recede from decadent excesses,
And beat retreat from novelists who trade
On "Sex," from artists whose chef-d'[oe]uvres are messes—
'Tis time indeed such minor plagues were stayed!
Then here's for cricket in this year of Grace,
Fair-play all round, straight hitting and straight dealing
In letters, morals, art, and commonplace
Reversion unto type in deed and feeling—
A path of true Reaction to retrace!
Caught with a "Catch."—The idiotic catch-line of a Parisian Café-Concert ditty—"En voulez-vous des z'homards?" has been taken up by the citizens of the gay French capital with as much avidity as characterized their seizure upon shares in the Russian loan. The Comtesse Y., in sportive mood, twitted her butler—a very ancient retainer of the family—upon his antiquated, out-of-date manners, and chaffingly suggested that he should attempt to be more fin-de-siècle. The veteran maître-d'hôtel assured Madame la Comtesse that he would give her no further cause for complaint. Accordingly, on the same evening, while handing round wine at the dinner-party, he promptly bellowed forth "En voulez-vous du Pommard?"