An Up-to-date Costume.
"For your evening dress I advise you simply to buy a piece of broad silver ribbon, pass it twice round the waist and knot it at the side, with a little bunch of berries and leaves caught into the knot."—Ladies' Paper.
REVOLT OF THE SUPER-GEORGIANS.
Wild Scenes at a Meeting of Protest.
An Indignation Meeting, to protest against the outrageous attacks levelled against Georgian writers and critics by Professor Noyes in his recent lecture at the Royal Institution and by Mr. A.D. Godley in an article in the current Nineteenth Century, was held last Saturday evening at the Klaxon Hall. The chair was taken by Mr. Edward Marsh, C.M.G., who was supported on the platform by a compact bevy of Georgian bards; but at an early stage of the meeting it became apparent that a majority of those present in the body of the hall were extremists of violent type, and eventually, as will be seen, the proceedings ended in something approximating to a free fight.
Mr. Marsh began by a frank confession. He had taken a First Class in the Cambridge Classical Tripos. But the days in which he had been steeped to the lips in Latin and Greek were long past, never to return. For many years he had not composed hexameters, elegiacs or iambics. He had thrown in his lot with insurgent youth, not as a competitor or rival, but as an advocate, an admirer and an adviser. Indeed, if he might venture to say so, he sometimes acted as a brake on the wheels of the triumphal Chariot of Free Verse. He was not an adherent of the fantastic movement known as "Dada." He had no desire to abolish the family, morality, logic, memory, archæology, the law and the prophets. A little madness was a splendid thing, but it must be methodic. Still, for the rest he was a Georgian, heart and soul, and it pained him when men who ought to know better raised the standard of reaction and sought to discredit the achievements of his protégés. These attacks could not be passed over in silence, and the meeting had been convened to consider how they should be met, whether by a reasoned protest or by retaliation.
Miss Messalina Stoot, who punctuated her remarks with the clashing of a pair of cymbals, observed that as a thorough-going Dadaist she had no sympathy with the half-hearted attitude of the Chairman. It was a battle between Dada and Gaga, and emphatically Dada must win.
Mr. Mimram Stoot, who accompanied himself on the sarrusophone, endorsed the iconoclastic views of his sister. The only poetry that counted was that which caused spinal chills and issued from husky haughty lips. The moanings of mediæval molluscs were of no avail, though they might excite the crustacean fossils of Oxford, the home of lost causes.