Private Views of the Last Fin-De-Siècle

Abstract

We are told that at end of nineteenth century, between first and second jubilees of Queen Victoria, there was considerable discontent seething minds of young English artists. The Queen ruled not only waves, but Muses; East and West met at her footstool, and boyish masqueraders found themselves surrounded by a self-satisfied commercial society, in which, as Mr. Burdett says, the pressure of numbers had become so great that needs and standards of multitude necessarily dominated everything. Writers like Macaulay (in high places) and Samuel Smiles (lower down board) had preached to millions a gospel of commercial prosperity as salvation of humanity. The successful citizen toiled at his office all week, and marched to church on Sundays, top hat and white waistcoat, with a little file of family behind him, apparent apotheosis of domestic virtues. The temptation to youth to 'eave 'alf a brick at him was irresistible. What so easy as to shout that his morality was half-humbug and his very business honor a fraud! What an effective counterblast to proclaim that all this pretense was really starving national intellect! What a natural corollary that, since to repress normal impulses was manifestly impossible, it was more honest and healthy to let inclinations have their way, and to satirize corruption of deceit by a genial celebration of delights of sin ! Such was genesis of Beardsley period-an unashamed precocity, protesting against shifts and subterfuges of a mammon-hearted middle age patois of suburbia, which is English language filtered through steak, toast, tea, and marmalade.