Best of all, Karl Beckson's anthology, Aesthetes and Decadents showcased a panoply of the period's writers, among them Arthur Symons, author of The Symbolist Movement in Literature (which influenced the young TS Eliot), and the alcoholic poet Lionel Johnson, who introduced Wilde to Lord Alfred Douglas, and later died after falling off a bar stool.Īpart from his tantrum-filled relationship with Wilde, “Bosie” – as Douglas was nicknamed – lives in literary history for a single line of poetry: “I am the love that dare not speak its name.” Loud whispers, however, were fairly common. WB Yeats's autobiography, for instance, memorialises what he called “The Tragic Generation”, mainly the artist Aubrey Beardsley and several poets of the Rhymers' Club, all of whom died young, including the wistful and tubercular Ernest Dowson: “I have been faithful to thee, Cynara, in my fashion.” Memoirs by Bernard Shaw and Vincent O'Sullivan, as well as Max Beerbohm's caricatures, revealed additional facets of Wilde – notably his conversation, courtesy and increasing corpulence – while Robert Hichens's 1895 novel, The Green Carnation, neatly satirised him as the witty Esme Amarinth. Wanting to learn more about fin de siecle London and its literature, I began to buy books. This bare-bones library of Oscariana – the superb letters, an insightful and beautifully written biography, Wilde's own delicious prose – opened a door into the 1890s. Last weekend, I was ensconced in said wing chair, idly daydreaming – my only real hobby – when I began to wonder: how did all these books manage to get into my house? Why do parts of this brick colonial resemble a Pennsylvania book barn or the stockroom at Politics and Prose?
More and more often, I settle into a shabby, cat-clawed wing chair with the day’s newspapers and periodically snort “Harrumph!” or grumble that the world is going to hell in a handbasket. My living room, to my delight if no one else, can now pass as the ramshackle library of an impoverished London club circa 1895. Admittedly, only a small number of people crossed my threshold during this time of coronavirus restrictions, but most never even bothered to ask, “Have you read all these books?” They just stood dumbfounded, though a few were overheard to murmur, “I feel sorry for his poor wife” or, more rarely, “There, but for the grace of God, go I”.
Even though I gave away or sold perhaps 150 boxes of books in 2020, the stunned amazement of anyone who wanders into my basement or attic apparently remains, to quote Sherlock Holmes, the one fixed point in a changing age.
0 kommentar(er)
