Whistler Stories

Found - Whistler Stories (Harper, New York 1913) put together by Don C Seitz. Many of the stories associated with the artist James McNeill Whistler are ironic

jokes about his incredible self regard ('...responding to an admirer who stated that there were only two great painters – Velasquez and himself. “Why drag in Velasquez.”') or withering put downs. This exchange with Oscar Wilde is a good example of the latter:

Wilde asked the artist's opinion upon a poem which he had written, presenting a copy to be read. Whistler read it and was handing it back without comment. 
“Well," queried Wilde, “do you perceive any worth?" 
“It's worth its weight in gold," replied Whistler. 
The poem was written on the very thinnest tissue-paper,

Gordon Bottomley - 1890's poet

Found in a copy Poems at White Nights (published in 1899 in Cecil Court, London) a contemporary review of the book. The review is unsigned but was obviously from a national daily paper as there are financial reports on the back. Gordon Bottomley is a mildly collected fin de siecle poet, of considerable talent but slight neglected -possibly because of his name which could be used as the the butt of jokes, so to speak. His first book The Mickle Drede and Other Verses was privately printed in Kendal in 1896  and is a great rarity and of some value. He attempted to destroy all of the 150 copies as he considered the work immature..The reviewer below senses dark currents in his work.





Mr. Gordon Bottomley's second volume, Poems at White Nights (At the Sign of the Unicorn), shows him still frequenting the darker woods of Faerie. One fragment in it is a dedication for some book of verses in which the receiver is bidden to read:

The dream I dreamed of England's prime,
Seeking within its outworn weed
The sweetness of that matin time.

But to no such pleasant theme does the muse address her in this volume written at "White Nights". For the most part we have simple pictures in rich half-tones of feeling or in grave symbolism. The are slight, but each has a clear artistic note, and beauty is never wanting.

The Dutch Sensitivists

An excellent introduction by Edmund Gosse to Louis Couperus's 1891 novel
Footsteps of Fate ('Noodlot') translated from the Dutch by Clara Bell. Gosse corresponded with Couperus but he wrote well informed  introductions similar to this to every book in Heinemann's long series of European novels. They show great scholarship and an enthusiasm for the emerging movements in writing in the last decade of the 19th century. While Britain had its aesthetic 1890s movement and the Celtic Twilight and the French their decadent writers the Dutch had the 'Sensitivists'…There are interesting references to the Dutch Browning (the poet Potgieter) also resident in Florence and also to Netscher the Dutch George Moore, a singular honour.

THE DUTCH SENSITIVISTS

In the intellectual history of all countries we find the same phenomenon incessantly recurring. New writers, new artists, new composers arise in revolt against what has delighted their grandfathers and satisfied their fathers. These young men, pressed together at first, by external opposition, into a serried phalanx, gradually win their way, become themselves the delight and then the satisfaction of their contemporaries, and, falling apart as success is secured to them, come to seem lax, effete and obsolete to a new race of youths, who effect a fresh aesthetic revolution.

The Rings of Baron Corvo

Biography of Baron Corvo
by A.J.A. Symons

An interesting side note on the appearance of the great cult writer can be found in this speech by C.H.('Harry') Pirie-Gordon (1883-1969) co -author with Baron Corvo  of The Weird of the Wanderer (by Prospero & Caliban). Baron Corvo was also known as Frederick Rolfe. The speech was delivered at the first banquet of the Corvine Society in June 1929 16 years after Corvo's death. Caliban speaks:

"His Archblessedness the Grand Master has referred to the Baron's sub fuse (sic) and sometimes revolting vesture. I cherish happier memories of his sartorial appearance. While he was our guest, sometimes he appeared in the purple habit designed and devised by himself for the Order of Chivalry, of which we were both members, a habit sumptuous and amaranthine: at others, when dining with the doubtless bucolic society, which marvelled at his conversation and his lore, he would wear a dinner jacket of soft bluish-grey velveteen,

Rare Decadence

From a catalogue from 2000, this very rare novel. There are less than a handful of decadent novels from the 1890s in English (plenty in French) and after Oscar Wilde and Marc Andre Raffalovich there is really only this novel published by the elusive Henry & Co., Try finding another copy! Recently it has been available as a P.O.D.

Langley, High. The Tides Ebb out to the Night; Being the Journal of a Young man - Basil Brooke- edited by his Friend Hugh Langley. (H. Henry, London 1896.) Full crimson buckram gilt lettered, ruled in blind, fore edges untrimmed.
8vo. vi,311pp. Highly uncommon decadent novel in the form of a journal and letters, showing an infatuation with French Symbolism. There are descriptions of decadent London rooms and a good deal of drug-taking including kif, ‘hasheesh’ and morphine to which the chief character becomes addicted, when his love affair with a young woman goes awry. The number of decadent English novels of this period is very small: this books appears unrecorded by any of the 90s bibliographies and, although highly accomplished, seems to have attracted very little notice in its day.

Oscar and the Oxford bullies

T. Earle Welby (1881-1933) is an almost forgotten writer, columnist and character. He is at present unknown to Wikipedia although Bill Greenwell writes about him at his blog about the New Statesman competition.  It's odd that this should be his only memorial as he was somewhat right wing and hostile to democracy.He enjoyed conversation, and was known for a mannerism whereby he used a sideways movement of his hand for emphasis, which, since it was often associated with his reminiscence of India, was described by a wit as 'the Calcutta Sweep.' His collection of literary essays has a review of a memoir by the actor manger Sir Frank Benson who was at Oxord with Oscar Wilde. Welby writes:

Oscar Wilde, a contemporary at another college, was, (Sir Frank) tells us, so far from being in those days 'a flabby aesthete' that only one man in that college was physically his match. Four raggers having decided to wreck his rooms, Wilde knocked down three, picked up the fourth and carried that vainly struggling enemy to his rooms, piled up all his furniture on top of the poor wretch, and then invited a crowd which had changed its allegiance to celebrate the triumph in the wines of that parsimonious creature. Excellent! and, disapproving of those who engage in horseplay with ass-sense, were I capable of tampering consciously with the sacred text of Peacock I should comment :

'The wines of beasts provide our feast, 

And their overthrow our chorus.'

But, and alas! it is very evident Sir Frank Benson thinks that if Wilde had kept to throwing hefty men downstairs he would have written something better than that matchless play, The Importance of Being Earnest, which is at once the perfect comedy of manners and the perfect parody of the comedy of manners.

**Welby is included in The Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations for this piece from his culinary book The Dinner Knell : '"Turbot, sir," said the waiter, placing before me two fishbones, two eyeballs, and a bit of black mackintosh…'

Herbert Horne (1855 - 1916)

An article from the long defunct Anglo - Italian Review, October 1918. Edited by Edward Hutton, an English  Italophile who wrote several Italian travel books and featuring articles by Nobel Prize winner Grazia Deledda, Norman Douglas & Benedetto Croce. This piece is by the novelist Reginal Turner and is an affectionate tribute to his friend Herbert Horne - art historian, art dealer, architect, typographer and Arts and Craft movement designer. The photo below is of him with his friend and colleague the architect  A.H. Mackmurdo (standing) and an older woman, possibly AHM's mother at a house ('Brooklyn') in Enfield. The story of Horne finding  two Michelangelo drawings for a penny each in the Fulham Road is hard to top...

HERBERT PERCY HORNE, who died in Florence

in May, 1916, belonged to the numerous band of

interesting Englishmen who made Italy their home,

and the memory of whose sojourns there does not

pass with their death. He did not found a family

there as did Walter Savage Landor. He took no

part in public life as did Waddington, who went

casually to Perugia and remained there to become

Syndic. It may even be said that to the majority

of Italians as to Englishmen his name was unknown.

He had an almost morbid love of retirement ;

those who knew him well could not but be amazed

at his slight suspicion--there is no other word-

of hospitality. Yet Herbert Horne was known to

a large circle which included some of the best-known

and ‘many of the most talked about of his contem-

poraries: most of them loved him, all of them

respected him, and he was recognised by them as one

of the most learned, one of the wisest, and one of the

most reliable men of his time.

Horne was indeed a “ character,” a very rare

personality, full of magnetism, yet lacking the

desire or the power of spreading it over a wide area.

It is seldom perhaps that a man of such a solid

reputation as he had among those who knew him

has been so little known to the general public, for

he .lived in an age when more things were known

about eminent people than they knew about them-

selves. He had to a peculiar extent the power to

“ pass in a crowd ” ; it was more peculiar in him that

he desired to do so; and the crowd remained quite

unaware of the stir he created among his friends

and those acquaintances with whom his learning

brought him in contact.

Vincent Starrett's Lionel Johnson

From a rare pamphlet Three Poems published by Edwin B Hill 'Ysleta' 1933 with an intro by Vincent Starrett - this Lionel Johnson poem found on the flyleaf of a work by Robert Louis Stevenson. These are possibly from Starrett's own collection.

Because with many a goodly word,
My flagging pulses you have stirred,
And, when to me high noon seemed night,
Have flooded me with gallant light:

I, who, to this, your island home,
A stranger, yet a friend have come,
Give, for your memorable sake,
'This poor, best wish, that I could make.

 Also a Johnson poem saluting Oscar Wilde on the publication of Dorian Gray. This has the true decadent 1890s feel (it was in Latin with a recent translation via the Et in Arcadia Ego site). Starrett states that this poem addressed to Oscar Wilde is from an original 'privately owned' manuscript (a valuable item) - it ends thus:

Hic sunt poma Sodomorum;
Hic sunt corda vitiorum;
Et peccata dulcia.
In excelsis et infernis,
Tibi sit, qui tanta cernis,
Gloriarum gloria

Here are the apples of Sodom!
Here are the hearts of corruption
And sweet sins!
In heaven and hell
May there be to you, who understands so much,
Glories of glories!

Letter from Baron Corvo

A rare calligraphic Baron Corvo letter (i.e. Frederick Rolfe) from 1903 republished in 50 copies by the eminent Corvine Donald Weeks author of "Corvo, Saint or Madman?" in 1975.

An attack on the tie

From Walking Essays by A.H. Sedgwick. This book appeared in 1912 and is mainly about walking - with a good piece on walking in London. As well as attacking ties, Sedgwick also attacks the waltz and its ubiquity. The reference to the 'ridiculous' ties of 1892 is illustrated  by a picture of an 1890s dandy (Robert de Montesquiou). Oscar Wilde went in for a fairly fat tie but it is hard to find good pictures of his neck wear...

Ties furnish perhaps the clearest instance of the break-down of utilitarianism. They serve no material purpose of any kind. The days are long gone by when the tie added perceptibly to the warmth of the body : even the ties of 1892, which seem ridiculous to-day, cannot have saved a single valetudinarian of that age (as he thought) from a cold in the chest, or (as we now learn) have weakened his capacity to resist chill. No man's health or bodily comfort would now be affected in the slightest degree by the presence or absence of a tie. Nor, if utilitarians take the rash step of admitting beauty into the system of pleasures, can very much be said for ties. It is true that they sometimes add a desirable touch of colour ; but if beauty were our aim in ties, should we stop for a moment within the present limitations of either colour or shape ? A large flounced piece of drapery with an elaborate colour scheme, twisted in decorative lines across our chest to a bow on the hips or the small of the back, would be the very least we should put up with. Can any one with a little knot of monochrome peering bashfully from a minute triangular opening in a waste of drab monotony talk seriously about beauty in ties ?