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6 Preface
Part I: Fundamentals of Part II: Object-Oriented Part III: GUI Programming
Programming Programming
Chapter 1 Introduction to Chapter 9 Objects and Classes Chapter 14 JavaFX Basics
Computers, Programs, and
Java
Chapter 10 Thinking in Objects Chapter 15 Event-Driven
Programming and
Chapter 2 Elementary Animations
Chapter 11 Inheritance and
Programming
Polymorphism
Chapter 16 JavaFX Controls
Chapter 3 Selections and Multimedia
Chapter 12 Exception
Handling and Text I/O
Chapter 4 Mathematical
Functions, Characters, Chapter 13 Abstract Classes
and Strings and Interfaces

Chapter 5 Loops Chapter 17 Binary I/O

Chapter 6 Methods

Chapter 7 Single-Dimensional
Arrays

Chapter 8 Multidimensional
Arrays

Chapter 18 Recursion

Organization of the Book

The chapters in this brief version can be grouped into three parts that, taken together, form a
solid introduction to Java programming. Because knowledge is cumulative, the early chapters
provide the conceptual basis for understanding programming and guide students through simple
examples and exercises; subsequent chapters progressively present Java programming in detail,
culminating with the development of comprehensive Java applications. The appendixes contain
a mixed bag of topics, including an introduction to number systems, bitwise operations, regular
expressions, and enumerated types.

Part I: Fundamentals of Programming (Chapters 1–8, 18)

The first part of the book is a stepping stone, preparing you to embark on the journey of learning
Java. You will begin to learn about Java (Chapter 1) and fundamental programming t­echniques
with primitive data types, variables, constants, assignments, expressions, and operators (Chapter
2), selection statements (Chapter 3), mathematical functions, characters, and strings (Chapter 4),
loops (Chapter 5), methods (Chapter 6), and arrays (Chapters 7–8). After Chapter 7, you can jump
to Chapter 18 to learn how to write recursive methods for solving inherently recursive problems.

Part II: Object-Oriented Programming (Chapters 9–13, and 17)

This part introduces object-oriented programming. Java is an object-oriented programming
language that uses abstraction, encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism to provide
 Preface  7
great flexibility, modularity, and reusability in developing software. You will learn program-
ming with objects and classes (Chapters 9–10), class inheritance (Chapter 11), polymorphism
(­Chapter 11), exception handling (Chapter 12), abstract classes (Chapter 13), and interfaces
(Chapter 13). Text I/O is introduced in Chapter 12 and binary I/O is discussed in Chapter 17.

Part III: GUI Programming (Chapters 14–16)

JavaFX is a new framework for developing Java GUI programs. It is not only useful for
developing GUI programs, but also an excellent pedagogical tool for learning object-oriented
programming. This part introduces Java GUI programming using JavaFX in Chapters 14–16.
Major topics include GUI basics (Chapter 14), container panes (Chapter 14), drawing shapes
(Chapter 14), event-driven programming (Chapter 15), animations (Chapter 15), and GUI con-
trols (Chapter 16), and playing audio and video (Chapter 16). You will learn the architecture
of JavaFX GUI programming and use the controls, shapes, panes, image, and video to develop
useful applications.

Appendixes
This part of the book covers a mixed bag of topics. Appendix A lists Java keywords.
­Appendix B gives tables of ASCII characters and their associated codes in decimal and in
hex. Appendix C shows the operator precedence. Appendix D summarizes Java modifiers and
their usage. Appendix E discusses special floating-point values. Appendix F introduces num-
ber systems and conversions among binary, decimal, and hex numbers. Finally, Appendix G
introduces bitwise operations. Appendix H introduces regular expressions. Appendix I covers
enumerated types.

Java Development Tools

You can use a text editor, such as the Windows Notepad or WordPad, to create Java programs
and to compile and run the programs from the command window. You can also use a Java
development tool, such as NetBeans or Eclipse. These tools support an integrated develop-
ment environment (IDE) for developing Java programs quickly. Editing, compiling, building,
executing, and debugging programs are integrated in one graphical user interface. Using these
tools effectively can greatly increase your programming productivity. NetBeans and Eclipse
are easy to use if you follow the tutorials. Tutorials on NetBeans and Eclipse can be found in IDE tutorials
the supplements on the Companion Website at www.pearsonglobaleditions.com/Liang.

Student Resources
The Companion Website (www.pearsonglobaleditions.com/Liang) contains the following
resources:
■■ Answers to CheckPoint questions
■■ Solutions to majority of even-numbered programming exercises
■■ Source code for the examples in the book
■■ Interactive quiz (organized by sections for each chapter)
■■ Supplements
■■ Debugging tips
■■ Video notes
■■ Algorithm animations
8 Preface

Supplements
The text covers the essential subjects. The supplements extend the text to introduce additional
topics that might be of interest to readers. The supplements are available from the Companion
Website.

Instructor Resources
The Companion Website, accessible from www.pearsonglobaleditions.com/Liang, c­ ontains the
following resources:
■■ Microsoft PowerPoint slides with interactive buttons to view full-color, syntax-highlighted
source code and to run programs without leaving the slides.
■■ Solutions to a majority of odd-numbered programming exercises.
■■ More than 200 additional programming exercises and 300 quizzes organized by ­chapters.
These exercises and quizzes are available only to the instructors. Solutions to these
­exercises and quizzes are provided.
■■ Web-based quiz generator. (Instructors can choose chapters to generate quizzes from a
large database of more than two thousand questions.)
■■ Sample exams. Most exams have four parts:
■■ Multiple-choice questions or short-answer questions
■■ Correct programming errors
■■ Trace programs
■■ Write programs
■■ Sample exams with ABET course assessment.
■■ Projects. In general, each project gives a description and asks students to analyze, design,
and implement the project.
Some readers have requested the materials from the Instructor Resource Center. Please
­understand that these are for instructors only. Such requests will not be answered.

Online Practice and Assessment

with MyProgrammingLab
MyProgrammingLab helps students fully grasp the logic, semantics, and syntax of program-
ming. Through practice exercises and immediate, personalized feedback, MyProgrammingLab
improves the programming competence of beginning students who often struggle with the
basic concepts and paradigms of popular high-level programming languages.
A self-study and homework tool, a MyProgrammingLab course consists of hundreds of
small practice problems organized around the structure of this textbook. For students, the sys-
tem automatically detects errors in the logic and syntax of their code submissions and offers
targeted hints that enable students to figure out what went wrong—and why. For instructors,
a comprehensive gradebook tracks correct and incorrect answers and stores the code inputted
by students for review.
 Preface  9
MyProgrammingLab is offered to users of this book in partnership with Turing’s Craft, the
makers of the CodeLab interactive programming exercise system. For a full demonstration,
to see feedback from instructors and students, or to get started using MyProgrammingLab in
your course, visit www.myprogramminglab.com.

Video Notes
We are excited about the new Video Notes feature that is found in this new edition. These VideoNote

videos provide additional help by presenting examples of key topics and showing how
to solve problems completely, from design through coding. Video Notes are available from
www.pearsonglobaleditions.com/Liang.

Algorithm Animations
We have provided numerous animations for algorithms. These are valuable pedagogical tools Animation
to demonstrate how algorithms work. Algorithm animations can be accessed from the Com-
panion Website.
10 Preface

Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Armstrong State University for enabling me to teach what I write and for
supporting me in writing what I teach. Teaching is the source of inspiration for continuing to
improve the book. I am grateful to the instructors and students who have offered comments,
suggestions, bug reports, and praise.
This book has been greatly enhanced thanks to outstanding reviews for this and previous
editions. The reviewers are: Elizabeth Adams (James Madison University), Syed Ahmed (North
Georgia College and State University), Omar Aldawud (Illinois Institute of Technology), Stefan
Andrei (Lamar University), Yang Ang (University of Wollongong, Australia), Kevin Bierre
(Rochester Institute of Technology), Aaron Braskin (Mira Costa High School), David Champion
(DeVry Institute), James Chegwidden (Tarrant County College), Anup Dargar (University of
North Dakota), Daryl Detrick (Warren Hills Regional High School), Charles Dierbach (Towson
University), Frank Ducrest (University of Louisiana at Lafayette), Erica Eddy (University of
Wisconsin at Parkside), Summer Ehresman (Center Grove High School), Deena Engel (New
York University), Henry A. Etlinger (Rochester Institute of Technology), James Ten Eyck
(Marist College), Myers Foreman (Lamar University), Olac Fuentes (University of Texas at
El Paso), Edward F. Gehringer (North Carolina State University), Harold Grossman (Clemson
University), Barbara Guillot (Louisiana State University), Stuart Hansen (University of Wis-
consin, Parkside), Dan Harvey (Southern Oregon University), Ron Hofman (Red River College,
Canada), Stephen Hughes (Roanoke College), Vladan Jovanovic (Georgia Southern University),
Deborah Kabura Kariuki (Stony Point High School), Edwin Kay (Lehigh University), Larry
King (University of Texas at Dallas), Nana Kofi (Langara College, Canada), George Koutsogi-
annakis (Illinois Institute of Technology), Roger Kraft (Purdue University at Calumet), Norman
Krumpe (Miami University), Hong Lin (DeVry Institute), Dan Lipsa (Armstrong State Univer-
sity), James Madison (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute), Frank Malinowski (Darton College),
Tim Margush (University of Akron), Debbie Masada (Sun Microsystems), Blayne Mayfield
(Oklahoma State University), John McGrath (J.P. McGrath Consulting), Hugh McGuire (Grand
Valley State), Shyamal Mitra (University of Texas at Austin), Michel Mitri (James Madison
University), Kenrick Mock (University of Alaska Anchorage), Frank Murgolo (California State
University, Long Beach), Jun Ni (University of Iowa), Benjamin Nystuen (University of Colo-
rado at Colorado Springs), Maureen Opkins (CA State University, Long Beach), Gavin Osborne
(University of Saskatchewan), Kevin Parker (Idaho State University), Dale Parson (Kutztown
University), Mark Pendergast (Florida Gulf Coast University), Richard Povinelli (Marquette
University), Roger Priebe (University of Texas at Austin), Mary Ann Pumphrey (De Anza Junior
College), Pat Roth (Southern Polytechnic State University), Amr Sabry (Indiana University),
Ben Setzer (Kennesaw State University), Carolyn Schauble (Colorado State University), David
Scuse (University of Manitoba), Ashraf Shirani (San Jose State University), Daniel Spiegel
(Kutztown University), Joslyn A. Smith (Florida Atlantic University), Lixin Tao (Pace Uni-
versity), Ronald F. Taylor (Wright State University), Russ Tront (Simon Fraser University),
Deborah Trytten (University of Oklahoma), Michael Verdicchio (Citadel), Kent Vidrine (George
Washington University), and Bahram Zartoshty (California State University at Northridge).
It is a great pleasure, honor, and privilege to work with Pearson. I would like to thank Tracy
Johnson and her colleagues Marcia Horton, Demetrius Hall, Yvonne Vannatta, Kristy Alaura,
Carole Snyder, Scott Disanno, Bob Engelhardt, Shylaja Gattupalli, and their colleagues for
organizing, producing, and promoting this project.
As always, I am indebted to my wife, Samantha, for her love, support, and encouragement.
 Preface  11

Acknowledgments for the Global Edition

Pearson would like to thank and acknowledge Yvan Maillot (Univresite Haute-Alsace) and
Steven Yuwono (National University of Singapore) for contributing to this Global Edition,
and Arif Ahmed (National Institute of Technology, Silchar), Annette Bieniusa (University
of Kaiserslautern), Shaligram Prajapat (Devi Ahilya Vishwavidyalaya, Indore), and Ram
Gopal Raj (University of Malaya) for reviewing this Global Edition.
CONTENTS
Chapter 1 I ntroduction to Computers,
­Programs, and Java™ 23
1.1 Introduction 24
1.2 What Is a Computer? 24
1.3 Programming Languages 29
1.4 Operating Systems 31
1.5 Java, the World Wide Web, and Beyond 32
1.6 The Java Language Specification, API, JDK,
JRE, and IDE 33
1.7 A Simple Java Program 34
1.8 Creating, Compiling, and Executing a Java Program 37
1.9 Programming Style and Documentation 40
1.10 Programming Errors 42
1.11 Developing Java Programs Using NetBeans 45
1.12 Developing Java Programs Using Eclipse 47

Chapter 2 Elementary Programming 55

2.1 Introduction 56
2.2 Writing a Simple Program 56
2.3 Reading Input from the Console 59
2.4 Identifiers 62
2.5 Variables 62
2.6 Assignment Statements and Assignment Expressions 64
2.7 Named Constants 65
2.8 Naming Conventions 66
2.9 Numeric Data Types and Operations 67
2.10 Numeric Literals 70
2.11 Evaluating Expressions and Operator Precedence 72
2.12 Case Study: Displaying the Current Time 74
2.13 Augmented Assignment Operators 76
2.14 Increment and Decrement Operators 77
2.15 Numeric Type Conversions 79
2.16 Software Development Process 81
2.17 Case Study: Counting Monetary Units 85
2.18 Common Errors and Pitfalls 87

Chapter 3 Selections 97
3.1 Introduction 98
3.2 boolean Data Type 98
3.3 if Statements 100
3.4 Two-Way if-else Statements 102
3.5 Nested if and Multi-Way if-else Statements 103
3.6 Common Errors and Pitfalls 105
3.7 Generating Random Numbers 109
3.8 Case Study: Computing Body Mass Index 111
3.9 Case Study: Computing Taxes 112
3.10 Logical Operators 115
3.11 Case Study: Determining Leap Year 119
3.12 Case Study: Lottery 120
3.13 switch Statements 122
12
 Contents  13
3.14 Conditional Operators 125
3.15 Operator Precedence and Associativity 126
3.16 Debugging 128

Chapter 4 Mathematical Functions,

Characters, and Strings 141
4.1 Introduction 142
4.2 Common Mathematical Functions 142
4.3 Character Data Type and Operations 147
4.4 The String Type 152
4.5 Case Studies 161
4.6 Formatting Console Output 167

Chapter 5 Loops 181

5.1 Introduction 182
5.2 The while Loop 182
5.3 Case Study: Guessing Numbers 185
5.4 Loop Design Strategies 188
5.5 Controlling a Loop with User Confirmation or a Sentinel Value 190
5.6 The do-while Loop 192
5.7 The for Loop 195
5.8 Which Loop to Use? 198
5.9 Nested Loops 200
5.10 Minimizing Numeric Errors 202
5.11 Case Studies 204
5.12 Keywords break and continue 208
5.13 Case Study: Checking Palindromes 211
5.14 Case Study: Displaying Prime Numbers 213

Chapter 6 Methods 227

6.1 Introduction 228
6.2 Defining a Method 228
6.3 Calling a Method 230
6.4 void vs. Value-Returning Methods 233
6.5 Passing Parameters by Values 236
6.6 Modularizing Code 239
6.7 Case Study: Converting Hexadecimals to Decimals 241
6.8 Overloading Methods 243
6.9 The Scope of Variables 246
6.10 Case Study: Generating Random Characters 247
6.11 Method Abstraction and Stepwise Refinement 249

Chapter 7 Single-Dimensional Arrays 269

7.1 Introduction 270
7.2 Array Basics 270
7.3 Case Study: Analyzing Numbers 277
7.4 Case Study: Deck of Cards 278
7.5 Copying Arrays 280
7.6 Passing Arrays to Methods 281
7.7 Returning an Array from a Method 284
7.8 Case Study: Counting the Occurrences of Each Letter 285
7.9 Variable-Length Argument Lists 288
7.10 Searching Arrays 289
7.11 Sorting Arrays 293
14 Contents
7.12 The Arrays Class 294
7.13 Command-Line Arguments 296

Chapter 8 Multidimensional Arrays 311

8.1 Introduction 312
8.2 Two-Dimensional Array Basics 312
8.3 Processing Two-Dimensional Arrays 315
8.4 Passing Two-Dimensional Arrays to Methods 317
8.5 Case Study: Grading a Multiple-Choice Test 318
8.6 Case Study: Finding the Closest Pair 320
8.7 Case Study: Sudoku 322
8.8 Multidimensional Arrays 325

Chapter 9 Objects and Classes 345

9.1 Introduction 346
9.2 Defining Classes for Objects 346
9.3 Example: Defining Classes and Creating Objects 348
9.4 Constructing Objects Using Constructors 353
9.5 Accessing Objects via Reference Variables 354
9.6 Using Classes from the Java Library 358
9.7 Static Variables, Constants, and Methods 361
9.8 Visibility Modifiers 366
9.9 Data Field Encapsulation 368
9.10 Passing Objects to Methods 371
9.11 Array of Objects 375
9.12 Immutable Objects and Classes 377
9.13 The Scope of Variables 379
9.14 The this Reference 380

Chapter 10 Object-Oriented Thinking 389

10.1 Introduction 390
10.2 Class Abstraction and Encapsulation 390
10.3 Thinking in Objects 394
10.4 Class Relationships 397
10.5 Case Study: Designing the Course Class 400
10.6 Case Study: Designing a Class for Stacks 402
10.7 Processing Primitive Data Type Values as Objects 404
10.8 Automatic Conversion between Primitive Types
and Wrapper Class Types 407
10.9 The BigInteger and BigDecimal Classes 408
10.10 The String Class 410
10.11 The StringBuilder and StringBuffer Classes 416

Chapter 11 Inheritance and

Polymorphism 433
11.1 Introduction 434
11.2 Superclasses and Subclasses 434
11.3 Using the super Keyword 440
11.4 Overriding Methods 443
11.5 Overriding vs. Overloading 444
11.6 The Object Class and Its toString() Method 446
11.7 Polymorphism 447
11.8 Dynamic Binding 447
11.9 Casting Objects and the instanceof Operator 451
11.10 The Object’s equals Method 455
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 Contents  15
11.11 The ArrayList Class 456
11.12 Useful Methods for Lists 462
11.13 Case Study: A Custom Stack Class 463
11.14 The protected Data and Methods 464
11.15 Preventing Extending and Overriding 467

Chapter 12 Exception Handling

and Text I/O 475
12.1 Introduction 476
12.2 Exception-Handling Overview 476
12.3 Exception Types 481
12.4 More on Exception Handling 484
12.5 The finally Clause 492
12.6 When to Use Exceptions 493
12.7 Rethrowing Exceptions 494
12.8 Chained Exceptions 495
12.9 Defining Custom Exception Classes 496
12.10 The File Class 499
12.11 File Input and Output 502
12.12 Reading Data from the Web 508
12.13 Case Study: Web Crawler 510

Chapter 13 Abstract Classes and Interfaces 521

13.1 Introduction 522
13.2 Abstract Classes 522
13.3 Case Study: the Abstract Number Class 527
13.4 Case Study: Calendar and GregorianCalendar 529
13.5 Interfaces 532
13.6 The Comparable Interface 535
13.7 The Cloneable Interface 540
13.8 Interfaces vs. Abstract Classes 545
13.9 Case Study: The Rational Class 548
13.10 Class-Design Guidelines 553

Chapter 14 JavaFX Basics 563

14.1 Introduction 564
14.2 JavaFX vs Swing and AWT 564
14.3 The Basic Structure of a JavaFX Program 564
14.4 Panes, Groups, UI Controls, and Shapes 567
14.5 Property Binding 570
14.6 Common Properties and Methods for Nodes 573
14.7 The Color Class 575
14.8 The Font Class 576
14.9 The Image and ImageView Classes 578
14.10 Layout Panes and Groups 580
14.11 Shapes 589
14.12 Case Study: The ClockPane Class 602

Chapter 15 Event-Driven Programming

and Animations 615
15.1 Introduction 616
15.2 Events and Event Sources 618
15.3 Registering Handlers and Handling Events 619
15.4 Inner Classes 623
15.5 Anonymous Inner Class Handlers 624
16 Contents
15.6 Simplifying Event Handling Using Lambda Expressions 627
15.7 Case Study: Loan Calculator 631
15.8 Mouse Events 633
15.9 Key Events 635
15.10 Listeners for Observable Objects 638
15.11 Animation 640
15.12 Case Study: Bouncing Ball 648
15.13 Case Study: US Map 652

Chapter 16 JavaFX UI Controls

and Multimedia 665
16.1 Introduction 666
16.2 Labeled and Label 666
16.3 Button 668
16.4 CheckBox 670
16.5 RadioButton 673
16.6 TextField 676
16.7 TextArea 677
16.8 ComboBox 681
16.9 ListView 684
16.10 ScrollBar 687
16.11 Slider 690
16.12 Case Study: Developing a Tic-Tac-Toe Game 693
16.13 Video and Audio 698
16.14 Case Study: National Flags and Anthems 701

Chapter 17 Binary I/O 713

17.1 Introduction 714
17.2 How Is Text I/O Handled in Java? 714
17.3 Text I/O vs. Binary I/O 715
17.4 Binary I/O Classes 716
17.5 Case Study: Copying Files 726
17.6 Object I/O 728
17.7 Random-Access Files 733

Chapter 18 Recursion 741

18.1 Introduction 742
18.2 Case Study: Computing Factorials 742
18.3 Case Study: Computing Fibonacci
Numbers 745
18.4 Problem Solving Using Recursion 748
18.5 Recursive Helper Methods 750
18.6 Case Study: Finding the Directory Size 753
18.7 Case Study: Tower of Hanoi 755
18.8 Case Study: Fractals 758
18.9 Recursion vs. Iteration 762
18.10 Tail Recursion 762

Appendixes 773
Appendix A Java Keywords 775
Appendix B The ASCII Character Set 776
 Contents  17

Appendix C Operator Precedence Chart 778

Appendix D Java Modifiers 780
Appendix E Special Floating-Point Values 782
Appendix F Number Systems 783
Appendix G Bitwise Operations 787
Appendix H Regular Expressions 788
Appendix I Enumerated Types 793

Quick Reference 799

Index 801
This page intentionally left blank
VideoNotes
Locations of VideoNotes
VideoNote
www.pearsonglobaleditions.com/Liang

Chapter 1 Introduction to Computers, Programs, Selection sort 293

and Java™ 23 Command-line arguments 297
Your first Java program 34 Coupon collector’s problem 304
Compile and run a Java program 39 Consecutive four 306
NetBeans brief tutorial 45
Eclipse brief tutorial 47 Chapter 8 Multidimensional Arrays 311
Find the row with the largest sum 316
Chapter 2 Elementary Programming 55 Grade multiple-choice test 318
Obtain input 59 Sudoku 322
Use operators / and % 74 Multiply two matrices 331
Software development Even number of 1s 338
process 81
Compute loan payments 82 Chapter 9 Objects and Classes 345
Compute BMI 94 Define classes and objects 346
Use classes 358
Chapter 3 Selections 97 Static vs. instance 361
Program addition quiz 99 Data field encapsulation 368
Program subtraction quiz 109 The this keyword 380
Use multi-way if-else The Fan class 386
statements 112
Sort three integers 132 Chapter 10 Object-Oriented Thinking 389
Check point location 134 The Loan class 391
The BMI class 394
Chapter 4 Mathematical Functions, Characters, The StackOfIntegers class 402
and Strings 141 Process large numbers 408
Introduce Math functions 142 The String class 410
Introduce strings and objects 152 The MyPoint class 424
Convert hex to decimal 165
Compute great circle distance 173 Chapter 11 Inheritance and Polymorphism 433
Convert hex to binary 176 Geometric class hierarchy 434
Polymorphism and dynamic
Chapter 5 Loops 181 binding demo 448
Use while loop 182 The ArrayList class 456
Guess a number 185 The MyStack class 463
Multiple subtraction quiz 188 New Account class 470
Use do-while loop 192
Minimize numeric errors 202 Chapter 12 Exception Handling and Text I/O 475
Display loan schedule 219 Exception-handling advantages 476
Sum a series 220 Create custom exception classes 496
Write and read data 502
Chapter 6 Methods 227 HexFormatException 515
Define/invoke max method 230
Use void method 233 Chapter 13 Abstract Classes and Interfaces 521
Modularize code 239 Abstract GeometricObject class 522
Stepwise refinement 249 Calendar and Gregorian
Reverse an integer 258 Calendar classes 529
Estimate p 261 The concept of interface 532
Redesign the Rectangle class 558
Chapter 7 Single-Dimensional Arrays 269
Random shuffling 274 Chapter 14 JavaFX Basics 563
Deck of cards 278 Getting started with JavaFX 564

19
Other documents randomly have
different content
I dreamed I was a barber; and there went
Beneath my hand, oh! manes extravagant.
Beneath my trembling fingers, many a mask
Of many a pleasant girl. It was my task
To gild their hair, carefully, strand by strand;
To paint their eyebrows with a timid hand;
To draw a bodkin, from a vase of Kohl,
Through the closed lashes; pencils from a bowl
Of sepia, to paint them underneath;
To blow upon their eyes with a soft breath.
They lay them back and watched the leaping bands.

The dream grew vague, I moulded with my hands

The mobile breasts, the valley; and the waist
I touched; and pigments reverently placed
Upon their thighs in sapient spots and stains,
Beryls and chrysolites and diaphanes,
And gems whose hot harsh names are never said
I was a masseur; and my fingers bled
With wonder as I touched their awful limbs.

Suddenly, in the marble trough there seems

O, last of my pale mistresses, sweetness!
A twylipped scarlet pansie. My caress
Tinges thy steel-grey eyes to violet,
Adown thy body skips the pit-a-pat
Of treatment once heard in a hospital
For plagues that fascinate, but half appal.

So, at the sound, the blood of me stood cold;

Thy chaste hair ripened into sullen gold;
Thy throat, the shoulders, swelled and were uncouth;
The breasts rose up and offered each a mouth;
And on the belly, pallid blushes crept,
That maddened me, until I laughed and wept.
 Here we have a long amorous catalogue. It is the catalogue age
which comes via Oscar Wilde’s Sphinx and Salomé from certain
French writers. But this does not make up for the singing power of
the poet, and in long poems it becomes singularly laborious.
However, this phase of poetry is so typical of the age that it is as
well to have dealt with it before turning to the essentially ‘singing’
poets of the period, Dowson and Davidson.
Indeed, there is no one in the nineties worthier of the
honourable title of poet than Ernest Dowson. With his unsatisfied
passion for Adelaide in Soho; his cry for ‘madder music and for
stronger wine’; his æsthetic theories, such as that the letter ‘v’ was
the most beautiful of the letters; his reverence for things French, he
has caused Mr. Symons, in one of his most notable essays, to draw a
delightful portrait of a true enfant de Bohême. Robert Harborough
Sherard has also kept the Dowson tradition up in his description of
the death of the vexed and torn spirit of the poet in his Twenty Years
in Paris, a work which contains much interesting material for a study
of the nineties. But Victor Plarr, another poet of the nineties,
enraged at the incompleteness of these pictures, has tried to give us
in his reminiscences, unpublished letters, and marginalia, the other
facet of Dowson—the poète intime known to few.
It is no question of ours, in a brief summary like this, which is
the truer portrait of Dowson; whether he was or was not like Keats
in his personal appearance; whether Arthur Moore and Dowson
wrote alternate chapters of A Comedy of Masks; whether in his last
days or not Leonard Smithers used to pay him thirty shillings a week
for all he could do; whether he used to pray or not in front of the
bearded Virgin at Arques; whether he used to drink hashish or not.
All these problems are outside the beauty of the lyric poetry of
Dowson; and it is by his poetry and not because of all these rumours
around his brief life that he will live.
He was the poet impressionist of momentary emotions, and
poetry with him was, as Stéphane Mallarmé said, ‘the language of a
crisis.’ Each Dowson poem is more or less the feverish impression of
a hectical crisis. For in a way he takes off where Keats ended, for
Keats was becoming a hectic, while Dowson started out as one.
Exceeding sorrow
Consumeth my sad heart!
Because to-morrow
We must part.
Now is exceeding sorrow
All my part!...

Be no word spoken;
Weep nothing: let a pale
Silence, unbroken
Silence prevail!
Prithee, be no word spoken,
Lest I fail!

His earliest poem to attract attention was Amor Umbratilis, which

appeared in Horne’s Century Guild Hobby Horse. It has the real
Dowson note, and marks him down at once as one of those poets
who are by nature buveurs de lune. That was in 1891. In 1892 came
out the first book of the Rhymers’ Club, and with six poems of
Dowson in it he definitely took his place in the movement. It is said
that the Oscar Wilde set sent him a telegram shortly after this
‘peremptorily ordering him to appear at the Café Royal to lunch with
the then great man.’ Dowson was flattered, and might well be, for
Wilde was a splendid judge of good work.
Two years later the Club’s second book appeared, and Dowson
has again half a dozen poems in it, including the lovely Extreme
Unction, and that rather doubtfully praised lyric ‘non sum qualis
eram bonae sub regno Cynarae.’ Then in the same year as The
Savoy (1896) appeared his Verses, printed on Japanese vellum and
bound in parchment, with a cover design in gold by Aubrey
Beardsley—a typical Smithers book. This volume contains the best of
Dowson, the handsel (if it is not too big a phrase to use of such a
delicate and delightful artist), the handsel of his immortality. For
there is something about Dowson’s best work, though so fragile in
its texture, that has the classic permanence of a latter-day
Propertius. He has a Latin brevity and clarity, and he is at his best in
this volume. Something has vanished from the enchantment of the
singer in Decorations (1899). It is like the flowers of the night
before. One feels that so many of these later verses had been done
perforce, as Victor Plarr says, rather to keep on in the movement lest
one was forgotten. But in 1899 the movement was moribund, and
the winter of discontent for the Pierrots of the nineties was fast
closing down. Remembering these things, one murmurs the sad
beauty of those perfect lines of this true poet in his first volume:
When this, our rose, is faded,
And these, our days, are done,
In lands profoundly shaded
From tempest and from sun:
Ah, once more come together,
Shall we forgive the past,
And safe from worldly weather
Possess our souls at last.

Not without reason one feels he has been called the ‘rosa
rosarum of All the Nineties,’ in so far as poetry is concerned; but,
personally, I would prefer to call him, if one has to call such a true
poet anything, the poets’ poet of the nineties. The best of his short
stories rank high in the great mass of the literature of those days,
and are dealt with (together with his partnership in two novels) in
another section. As for his little one-act play, The Pierrot of the
Minute, one is apt to feel perhaps that Beardsley was not over unjust
to it, when he described it as a tiresome playlet he had to illustrate.
At any rate, it was the cause of Beardsley’s doing one or two
admirable decorations, even if the actual play, in which the young
American poet of the nineties, Theodore Peters (of whom more
anon), and Beardsley’s own sister acted, was not effective as a stage
production.
 There is no doubt but that Davidson, though he was outside the
coteries of the nineties, was still of them. First of all he was a
Scotchman of evangelical extraction, and secondly he was not an
Oxford man. All this made him outside the group. On the other
count, he was of the Rhymers’ Club, though he did not contribute to
the books. He was strongly influenced by Nietzsche, though the
French influence in him was rather negative. His books came from
the Bodley Head and were well recognised by its other members.
Beardsley even decorated some of them, and Rothenstein did his
portrait for The Yellow Book. In fact, Davidson himself wrote for that
periodical. All this made him of the group. It would be thus
impossible to pass over such a poet in connection with this
movement, for Davidson has written some magnificent lyrics, if he
has made his testaments too often and too turgidly. The Davidson,
indeed, of the nineties will be discovered to be, by any one
examining his works, the Davidson that will most probably survive.
He was born in 1857, but as Mr. Holbrook Jackson admirably
puts it, ‘John Davidson did not show any distinctive fin de siècle
16
characteristics until he produced his novel Perfervid in 1890.’ His
next work, a volume of poetry, which was the first to attract
attention, In a Music Hall and other Poems (1891), accentuates
these distinctive characteristics, and fairly launches him on the tide
of the movement. Before that time he had been school-mastering
and clerking in Scotland, while his leisure had begotten three rather
ill-conceived works. Davidson discovered himself when he came to
London to write. The movement of the nineties stimulated him
towards artistic production, and when that movement was killed by
the fall of Wilde, and buried by the Boer War, Davidson again lost
himself in the philosophic propaganda of his last years before he was
driven to suicide. Philosophy, indeed, with John Davidson, was to eat
one’s heart with resultant mental indigestion that completely
unbalanced the artist in him. Therefore, so far as this appreciation is
concerned, we only have to deal with the happy Davidson of the
Ballads and Fleet Street Eclogues fame; the gay writer of A Random
Itinerary (1894); the rather hopeless novelist of Baptist Lake (1894),
and The Wonderful Mission of Earl Lavender (1895). The last tedious
phase before he gave himself to the Cornish sea is no affair of ours.
In his Testament he says ‘none should outlive his power,’ and
realising probably that he had made this mistake, he wished to end
it all.

16
The Eighteen Nineties, by Holbrook Jackson, p.
215 1913.

But in the nineties he was like his own birds, full of ‘oboe’ song
and ‘broken music.’ Seldom has the English river, the Thames, been
more sweetly chaunted than by him. While if we are looking for his
kinship with his time there is no doubt about it in The Ballad of a
Nun, who remarks:
I care not for my broken vow,
Though God should come in thunder soon,
I am sister to the mountains now,
And sister to the sun and moon.

A statement which we feel many of the Beardsley ladies cadaverous

with sin or fat with luxury would have been quite capable of
repeating. Again, his Thirty Bob a Week in The Yellow Book is as
much a ninety effort as his Ballad of Hell, while his novel, Earl
Lavender, is a burlesque of certain of the eccentricities of the period.
In a poetical note to this volume he sings:
Oh! our age end style perplexes
All our Elders’ time has famed;
On our sleeves we wear our sexes,
Our diseases, unashamed.
The prevalent realistic disease in poetry is well represented by A
Woman and her Son:
He set his teeth, and saw his mother die,
Outside a city reveller’s tipsy tread
Severed the silence with a jagged rent.

Above all, Davidson handles with marked facility the modern ballad
medium of narrative verse. The Ballad of a Nun, The Ballad of an
Artist’s Wife, and others, relate their story in easy, jogging quatrains.
As a sample one can quote from A New Ballad of Tannhäuser:
As he lay worshipping his bride,
While rose leaves in her bosom fell,
On dreams came sailing on a tide
Of sleep, he heard a matin bell.

‘Hark! let us leave the magic hill,’

He said, ‘and live on earth with men.’
‘No, here,’ she said, ‘we stay until
The Golden Age shall come again.’

But if Davidson could tell a tale in verse it cannot be said he

understood the novel form. Although here it is rather noticeable that
he has a strange, unique feature among his contemporaries. For he
at least has a sense of humour. Max Beerbohm, it is true, had the
gift of irony; but Davidson, almost alone, has a certain vein of grim
Scotch humour, as, for example, in the character of little red-headed
Mortimer in Perfervid. In Dowson, Johnson, Symons, and the others,
one is sometimes appalled by the seriousness of it all. Lastly, but by
no means least, Davidson occasionally attains the lyric rapture of
unadulterated poetry in his shorter pieces, while his vignettes of
nature linger in the memory on account of their truth and beauty.
Both these qualities—the lyric rapture and the keen eye for country
sights and sounds—are to be found, for instance, in A Runnable
Stag:
 When the pods went pop on the broom, green broom,
And apples began to be golden-skinned,
We harboured a stag in the Priory coomb,
And we feathered his trail up wind, up wind!

Among many other ambitions, Davidson wanted to fire the scientific

world with imaginative poetry. As he phrased it: ‘Science is still a
valley of dead bones till imagination breathes upon it.’ There are
indeed evidences of an almost Shelleyan pantheism in his credo.
Unhappy was his life, but, probably, he did not labour in vain, for a
handsel of his song will endure. Writing, indeed, was the consolation
of his life:
I cannot write, I cannot think;
’Tis half delight and half distress;
My memory stumbles on the brink
Of some unfathomed happiness—

Of some old happiness divine,

What haunting scent, what haunting note,
What word, or what melodious line,
Sends my heart throbbing to my throat?

Indeed, why repeat it, both Dowson and he will live by their poetry.
But in the case of Davidson, in addition, there is his rather
elephantine humour. While again it must always be remembered that
he had the courage to state that the fear of speaking freely had
‘cramped the literature of England for a century.’ It was the liberty of
the French literature indeed that in no small degree captivated the
minds of all these young men. Very few of them, however, had the
courage to speak freely. But it must always remain to Davidson’s
credit that he tried to write a freer, emancipated novel, which,
however, he failed to do, because he had a very remote idea of
novel construction.
It was in 1896 that the quaint little salmon-pink volume of
William Theodore Peters, the young American poet, appeared,
entitled Posies out of Rings. This young American was an intimate of
some of the men of the nineties, and though it is doubtful whether
he himself would have ever achieved high fame as a poet, he had a
sincere love for the beautiful things of Art. Among all these tragedies
of ill-health, insanity and suicide that seemed to track down each of
these young men, his fate was perhaps the saddest of all, for he
17
died of starvation in Paris, where many of his verses had appeared
in a distinctly American venture, The Quartier Latin. His volume of
conceits are a harking back, not always satisfactorily, to the ancient
form of the versified epigram. What was wrong with his Muse is that
it was only half alive. He puts indeed his own case in a nutshell in
that charming little poem Pierrot and the Statue, which I venture to
quote in full:

17
R. H. Sherard, Twenty Years in Paris.

One summer evening in a charméd wood,

Before a marble Venus, Pierrot stood;
A Venus beautiful beyond compare,
Gracious her lip, her snowy bosom bare,
Pierrot amorous, his cheeks aflame,
Called the white statue many a lover’s name.
An oriole flew down from off a tree,
‘Woo not a goddess made of stone!’ sang he.
‘All of my warmth to warm it,’ Pierrot said,
When by the pedestal he sank down dead;
The statue faintly flushed, it seemed to strive
To move—but it was only half alive.

Such was the Muse’s response to Peters’ wooing; while he, in that
strange bohemian world of so many of the young writers of that day,
wrote in another short poem the epitaph of the majority of those
who gave so recklessly of their youth, only to fail. It is called To the
Café aux Phares de l’Ouest, Quartier Montparnasse:
The painted ship in the paste-board sea
Sails night and day.
To-morrow it will be as far as it was yesterday.
But underneath, in the Café,
The lusty crafts go down,
And one by one, poor mad souls drown—
While the painted ship in the paste-board sea
Sails night and day.

Such, indeed, was too often the fate of the epigoni of the
movement. Their nightingales were never heard; they were buried
with all their songs still unsung.
The only other volume which Theodore Peters essayed, to my
knowledge, was a little poetic one-acter like his friend Ernest
Dowson’s Pierrot of the Minute (for which work he wrote an
epilogue). Peters’ play, entitled The Tournament of Love, is a very
scarce item of the nineties’ bibliography. He calls it a pastoral
masque in one act, and it was published by Brentano’s at Paris in
1894 and illustrated with drawings by Alfred Jones. As Bantock
wrote the music for The Pierrot of the Minute, Noel Johnson
composed the melodies for The Tournament of Love. The masque
was put on at the Théâtre d’Application (La Bodinière), 18 rue St.
Lazare, May 8, 1894. Peters himself took the part of Bertrand de
Roaix, a troubadour, while among the cast were Wynford Dewhurst,
the painter, and Loïe Fuller, the dancer. The scene is an almond
orchard on the outskirts of Toulouse, on the afternoon of the 3rd
May, 1498. ‘A group of troubadours discovered at the right of the
stage, seated upon a white semicircular Renaissance bench, some
tuning their instruments. Other poets towards the back. A laurel tree
at the right centre. On the left centre two heralds guard the
entrance to the lists.’ Pons d’Orange, the arrived poet, will win at this
tournament of love, the Eglantine nouvelle, ‘that golden prize of wit.’
But it is won by Bertrand de Roaix, who wants it not, but the love of
the institutress of this court of love, ‘Clémence Isaure, the Primrose
Queen of Beauty.’ At his love protestations she laughs; the
troubadour goes outside the lists and stabs himself. As he lies dying
Clémence, clothed in her white samite, powdered with silver fleur-
de-lys and edged with ermine, her dust-blonde hair bound with a
fillet of oak-leaves, comes forth from the lists and finds her boy
lover’s body:
Love came and went; we
Knew him not. I have found my soul too late.
 V
The Victorian literary era was fecund in essayists, and the last
decade lived up to this reputation. The forerunners of the essayists
of the nineties were obviously Walter Pater, John Addington
Symonds, Oscar Wilde with his Intentions and Whistler in his Gentle
Art. Behind these there was a great mass of French influence which,
together with literary impressionism as exemplified in such books as
Crackanthorpe’s Vignettes, was to give the essay and the so-called
study a new lease of life. Indeed, what came out of the period was
not merely criticism as a useful broom sweeping away the chaff from
the wheat, but criticism itself as a creative art, as Wilde chose to call
it; not merely dry-as-dust records of plays and cities, and other
affairs as in guide manuals, but artistic impressions, in some ways as
vital as the objects themselves. Mr. Arthur Symons, in particular, has
given us an abundance of this kind of work of which I have already
spoken. So did Lionel Johnson and Mr. Max Beerbohm, to whom I
propose to allude here, and many others like Mr. Bernard Shaw,
who, though not of the movement, moved alongside it on his own
way, and Mr. G. S. Street, in his Episodes, Richard Le Gallienne,
Arthur Galton, Francis Adams in his Essays in Modernity, etc. etc.
One has only to turn over the magazines of the period to find a band
of writers, too numerous to mention, who aided on the movement
with their pens. To cite one prominent example alone, there was
Grant Allen with his essay on The New Hedonism. Here, however, I
must be content with a brief appreciative glance at the works of the
two writers I have mentioned, who were both actually of and in the
movement itself. I have not here of set purpose referred to the
Henley essayists like Charles Whibley. But the two men of the
nineties I have chosen to speak of here have been selected in the
way an essayist should be selected nine times out of ten, that is to
say, because of his pleasing personality. These two writers—
particularly Max—are such individual writers, yet they never offend.
They are just pleasant garrulous companions.
For those who care at all passionately for the precious things of
literature, the work of Lionel Johnson will always remain a cherished
and secluded nook. The man was a scholar, a poet, and a critic,
whose dominant note was gracile lucidity. A friend writing of his
personal appearance at the time of his death said, ‘Thin, pale, very
delicate he looked, with a twitching of the facial muscles, which
showed even at the age of twenty-four how unfit was his physique
to support the strain of an abnormally nervous organization. Quick
and mouselike in his movements, reticent of speech and low-voiced,
he looked like some old-fashioned child who had strayed by chance
into an assembly of men. But a child could not have shown that
inward smile of appreciative humour, a little aloof, a little
contemptuous perhaps, that worked constantly around his mouth.
He never changed except in the direction of a greater pallor and a
greater fragility.’
Cloistral mysticism was the key-chord of his two volumes of
poetry (1895 and 1897). In some respects he seems to have strayed
out of the seventeenth century of Crashaw and Herbert. His early
training, no doubt, engendered this aspect. After six years in the
grey Gothic school of Winchester he passed on to New College,
Oxford. Here he came under the influence of Pater, and was
charmed by the latter’s then somewhat hieratic austerity. A devout
Irish Catholic, he was moved by three themes: his old school,
Oxford, and Ireland, and to these he unfortunately too often
devoted his muse. After the quiet seclusion of his Oxford years, on
entering the vortex of London literary life he found that the world of
wayfaring was a somewhat rough passage in the mire for one so
delicate. Out of the struggle between his scholarly aspirations and
the cry of his time for life, more life, was woven perhaps the finest
of all his poems, The Dark Angel:
 Dark angel, with thine aching lust
To rid the world of penitence:
Malicious angel, who still dost
My soul such subtile violence!—

Because of thee, the land of dreams

Becomes a gathering place of fears:
Until tormented slumber seems
One vehemence of useless tears....

Thou art the whisper in the gloom,

The hinting tone, the haunting laugh:
Thou art the adorner of my tomb,
The minstrel of mine epitaph.

Most of his poems are subjective, and the majority have a certain
stiffness of movement of a priest laden with chasuble; but
sometimes, however, as in Mystic and Cavalier, or in the lines on the
statue of Charles I at Charing Cross, he writes with a winsome
charm and freedom of spirit:
Armoured he rides, his head
Bare to the stars of doom:
He triumphs now, the dead
Beholding London’s gloom....

Surely this poem has the proud note of Henley! There is another
trait in his verse, which, in view of his essays, it is as well not to
pass over. Like William Watson, his literary poems are pregnant with
phrases of rich criticism. He calls back the immortals in a true
bookman’s invocation hailing ‘opulent Pindar,’ ‘the pure and perfect
voice of Gray,’ ‘pleasant and elegant and garrulous Pliny’:
 Herodotus, all simple and all wise;
Demosthenes, a lightning flame of scorn:
The surge of Cicero, that never dies;
And Homer, grand against the ancient morn.

But we are here chiefly concerned with his prose writings. If it is

the duty of the essayist to mirror the intellectuality of his age, Lionel
Johnson was a mirror for the Oxford standpoint of the nineties.
There still remain many of his papers uncollected in various old
newspaper files. But certainly the best of his work has been lovingly
collected by friendly hands, and worthily housed in Post Liminium.
Take, for instance, this passage from an essay on books published
originally in The Academy (December 8th, 1900):

The glowing of my companionable fire upon the backs of

my companionable books, and then the familiar difficulty of
choice. Compassed about by old friends, whose virtues and
vices I know better than my own, I will be loyal to loves that
are not of yesterday. New poems, new essays, new stories,
new lives, are not my company at Christmastide, but the
never-ageing old. ‘My days among the dead are passed.’
Veracious Southey, how cruel a lie! My sole days among the
dead are the days passed among the still-born or moribund
moderns, not the white days and shining nights free for the
strong voices of the ancients in fame. A classic has a
permanence of pleasurability; that is the meaning of his
estate and title.

Or again, Johnson in his paper on The Work of Mr. Pater, sets

forth perhaps the best appreciation of his master that has yet
appeared:

‘Magica sympathiæ!’ words borne upon the shield of Lord

Herbert of Cherbury, are inscribed upon the writings of Mr.
Pater, who found his way straight from the first to those
matters proper to his genius, nor did he, as Fuseli says of
 Leonardo, ‘waste life, insatiate in experiment.’... ‘Nemo
perfectus est,’ says St. Bernard, ‘qui perfectior esse appetit’: it
is as true in art as in religion. In art also ‘the way to
perfection is through a series of disgusts’ ... and truly, as
Joubert said, we should hesitate before we differ in religion
from the saints, in poetry from the poets.... There is no
languorous toying with things of beauty, in a kind of opiate
dream, to be found here.

While Symons has written on all the arts, the sphere of Johnson
has been more limited to traditional English lines. Johnson attempts
no broad æsthetical system like the former. All that he does is to
illuminate the writer of whom he is speaking. And his little essays,
eminent in their un-English lucidity, their scrupulous nicety, their
conscious and deliberate beauty, adding to our belles lettres a
classical execution and finish (which perfection accounts perhaps for
the classical smallness of his bookmaking) have all the bewildering
charm of a born stylist. Certain of his phrases linger in the mind like
music. ‘Many a sad half-murmured thought of Pascal, many a deep
and plangent utterance of Lucretius.’ Or the line: ‘The face whose
changes dominate my heart.’ Like the styles of Newman and Pater,
on which his own is founded, he is singularly allusive. He cites critics
by chapter and verse like an advocate defending a case. In fact, as
in his critical magnum opus, The Art of Thomas Hardy, he is
amazingly judicial. It is, too, since he is essentially academic, to the
older critics he prefers to turn for guidance. As he writes: ‘Flaubert
and Baudelaire and Gautier, Hennequin and M. Zola and M.
Mallarmé, with all their colleagues or exponents, may sometimes be
set aside, and suffer us to hear Quintilian or Ben Jonson, Cicero or
Dryden.’ This habit sometimes makes him strenuous reading,
particularly in longer criticisms like The Art of Thomas Hardy.
We grow weary of all this quotative authority. Burton’s Anatomy
of Melancholy cannot be brought into every-day literary criticism. We
want to hear more of Lionel Johnson’s own direct opinions and less
of these selected passages from his library. So it is to those passages
where Johnson is most himself we turn in The Art of Thomas Hardy,
which, in spite of its academicism and the youthfulness of its author,
remains a genuine piece of sound critical work. The delightful
imagery of the prose in such passages is often very illuminating, as
in this paragraph:

From long and frequent converse with works of any

favourite author, we often grow to thinking of them under
some symbol or image; to see them summed up and
expressed in some one composite scene of our own making;
this is my ‘vision’ of Mr. Hardy’s works. A rolling down country,
crossed by a Roman road; here a gray standing stone, of
what sacrificial ritual origin I can but guess; there a grassy
barrow, with its great bones, its red-brown jars, its rude gold
ornament, still safe in earth; a broad sky burning with stars; a
solitary man. It is of no use to turn away, and to think of the
village farms and cottages, with their antique ways and looks;
of the deep woods, of the fall of the woodman’s axe, the stir
of the wind in the branches; of the rustic feasts and festivals,
when the home-brewed drink goes round, to the loosening of
tongues and wits; of the hot meadows, fragrant hayfields,
cool dairies, and blazing gardens; of shining cart-horses
under the chestnut-trees and cows called in at milking time:
they are characteristic scenes, but not the one characteristic
scene. That is the great down by night, with its dead in their
ancient graves, and its lonely living figure; ...

There is, perhaps, a reek about it all of a too-conscious imitation

of Pater’s murmured obituaries which makes one in the end rather
tired of this hieratic treatment of art, so that one turns rather gladly
to the one or two tales he wrote. For example in The Lilies of
France, an episode of French anti-clericalism, which appeared in The
Pageant, 1897, he slowly builds up a thing of verbal beauty that one
feels was actually worthy of him, while in the previous number of
the same quarterly he perpetrated a delightful ironism on the literary
men of his period entitled Incurable, in which, perhaps, we may
trace faint autobiographical clues. Such, briefly, was the work of this
young man who was found dead in Fleet Street early one morning,
aged thirty-five.
But the writer who was to bring irony in English literature to a
consummate pitch, and add to the age a strange brief brilliance of
his own wilful spirit, was Max Beerbohm. Max, the ‘Incomparable’ as
Bernard Shaw once described him, is the charm of the gilded lily, the
fairy prince of an urbane artificiality: he is in literature what the
cocktail is among drinks; he is the enemy of dullness and the friend
of that Greek quality called ‘charis.’ He is the public school and
Varsity man who is fond of, but afraid of, being tedious in literature;
so with delightful affectation his vehicle is persiflage with a load of
wit he pretends to disdain. Of all the prose writers of the Beardsley
period he is the easiest and most charming to read. In fact, he is the
ideal essayist. He titillates the literary sense. Fortunately his glass is
small, for if one had to drink it in quart pots the result would be as
disastrous as in his one and only mistake—the long novel Zuleika
Dobson, which is a late work written long after the nineties had been
swallowed up by that maw which swallowed up Lesbia’s sparrow and
all other beautiful dead things.
Max said in jest, ‘I belong to the Beardsley period,’ and it is one
of those jests which is only too painfully true. When he was at
Oxford he was caught up in the movement, and wrote, under Wilde’s
influence, A Defence of Cosmetics for the first number of The Yellow
Book, and he also appeared in Lord Alfred Douglas’s magazine.
Thenceforward he contributed to various quarterlies, while in 1896
the little red volume with its white paper label appeared as The
Works, containing all the best of this precocious enfant terrible of
literature, who assures us that he read in bed, while at school,
Marius the Epicurean, and found it not nearly so difficult as
Midshipman Easy. At the age of twenty-five he cries: ‘I shall write no
more. Already I feel myself to be a trifle outmoded,’ and he
religiously does not keep his word. He keeps pouring out caricatures,
writes More, the companion volume to The Works, and perpetrates
his short story The Happy Hypocrite. Beyond 1899 we cannot follow
him, but he has been busy ever since with his parodies, his Yet
Again, his lamentable novel, his one-act play, and so on.
It is to that Beardsley period to which he said he belonged we
are here restricted. And it must be admitted that though the Boer
War and the Great War do not seem to have gagged him, there is
something so impishly impudent in his earlier work which renders it
more remarkable than the complacent efforts of his later years.
Amid the searching seriousness of the nineties, Max is like balm
in Gilead. He has the infinite blessing of irony. The others, except
Beardsley (who too has this gift), are so appallingly serious. The
French influences that went to their making seem to have killed the
valiant English humour of Falstaff, Pickwick, and Verdant Green.
They are all like young priests who will take no liberty with their
ritual; but Max saves the period with his whimsical irony. His is not
the fearful, mordant irony of Octave Mirbeau, but a dainty butterfly
fancy playing lightly over the pleasures of a pleasant life. To be
essentially civilised is to be like a god. This is the pose of such a
mentality. It is a winsome pose with no sharp edges to it, just as the
poseur himself must be wilfully blind to all the seaminess of life. In
front of his window (if a temperament be a window looking out on
life) there is a pleasant garden. Beyond is the noise and dust of the
highway. He is the dandy in his choice of life as in his choice of
literature, and in more than one sense he has written the happiest
essays of the period.
It has been said his caricatures are essays. May we not equally
say his essays are caricatures? The essay, indeed, is the work of the
feline male, the man who sits beside the fire like Charles Lamb. The
out-of-doors man writes the episode. But Max is essentially an
indoors man, who has a perfect little dressing-room like a lady’s
boudoir, but much neater, where he concocts his essays we read so
easily by infinite labour, with a jewelled pen. It is as though he had
said: ‘Literature must either be amusing or dull; mine shall be the
former.’ He is very much the young man about town who has
consented gracefully to come and charm us. What he wrote of
Whistler in The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, we may say of him:
‘His style never falters. The silhouette of no sentence is ever blurred.
Every sentence is ringing with a clear, vocal cadence.’ And the refrain
is Max himself all the time, and his personality is so likeable we
stomach it all the time. It is the note that vibrates through all his
amiable satiric irony, whether it be on the House of Commons
Manner or in defence of the use of Cosmetics, or in describing the
period of 1880. Everything, from first to last, is done with such good
taste. Even in his wildest flights of raillery he is utterly purposed not
to offend. In his charming paper, 1880, he has given us a vigorous
vignette of the previous decade to The Yellow Book age. One can
hardly help quoting a small passage here from this admirably worked
up prose: ‘In fact Beauty had existed long before 1880. It was Mr.
Oscar Wilde who managed her début. To study the period is to admit
that to him was due no small part of the social vogue that Beauty
began to enjoy. Fired by his fervid words, men and women hurled
their mahogany into the streets and ransacked the curio-shops for
the furniture of Annish days. Dadoes arose upon every wall,
sunflowers and the feathers of peacocks curved in every corner, tea
grew quite cold while the guests were praising the Willow Pattern of
its cup. A few fashionable women even dressed themselves in
sinuous draperies and unheard-of greens. Into whatsoever ball-room
you went, you would surely find, among the women in tiaras, and
the fops and the distinguished foreigners, half a score of comely
ragamuffins in velveteen, murmuring sonnets, posturing, waving
their hands. Beauty was sought in the most unlikely places. Young
painters found her mobbled in the fogs, and bank-clerks versed in
the writings of Mr. Hamerton, were heard to declare, as they sped
home from the city, that the Underground Railway was beautiful
from London Bridge to Westminster, but not from Sloane Square to
Notting Hill Gate.’
It is thus that Max can play with a chord of almost tender irony
on his subject, and such a style, so full of the writer’s personality,
has the cachet of the veritable essayist. How charmingly, for
example, he records his reminiscences of Beardsley. It is a delightful
little picture of the artist, interesting enough to place beside Arthur
Symons’s portrait: ‘He loved dining out, and, in fact, gaiety of any
kind. His restlessness was, I suppose, one of the symptoms of his
malady. He was always most content where there was the greatest
noise and bustle, the largest number of people, and the most
brilliant light. The “domino-room” at the Café Royal had always a
great fascination for him: he liked the mirrors and the florid gilding,
the little parties of foreigners, and the smoke and the clatter of the
dominoes being shuffled on the marble tables.... I remember, also,
very clearly, a supper at which Beardsley was present. After the
supper we sat up rather late. He was the life and soul of the party,
till, quite suddenly almost in the middle of a sentence, he fell fast
asleep in his chair. He had overstrained his vitality, and it had all left
him. I can see him now as he sat there with his head sunk on his
breast; the thin face, white as the gardenia in his coat, and the
prominent, harshly-cut features; the hair, that always covered his
whole forehead in a fringe and was of so curious a colour—a kind of
tortoise-shell; the narrow, angular figure, and the long hands that
18
were so full of power.’

18
The Idler, May, 1898.

Outside this medium of the essay, with the exception of the

caricatures, Max is no longer the incomparable, for his short story,
19
The Happy Hypocrite, is not a short story at all, but a spoilt essay;
while his novel is not merely a failure, but a veritable disaster. With
his first paper in The Yellow Book he fell in with the step of the men
of the nineties, and he too became a part of their efflorescence.
Sufficient unto that time is his work, and with a final quotation from
this early paper so redolent of the movement that there is no
mistaking it, we must leave him and his future on the knees of the
gods: ‘Was it not at Capua that they had a whole street where
nothing was sold but dyes and unguents? We must have such a
street, and, to fill our new Seplosia, our Arcade of Unguents, all
herbs and minerals and live creatures shall give of their substance.
The white cliffs of Albion shall be ground to powder for Loveliness,
and perfumed by the ghost of many a little violet. The fluffy eider-
ducks, that are swimming round the pond, shall lose their feathers,
that the powder-puff may be moonlike as it passes over Loveliness’
lovely face.’

19
His Children’s Tale, The Small Boy and the
Barley Sugar (The Parade, 1897), should also be
mentioned as another case of shipwrecked
ingenuity.
 VI
Here I propose to go through a litany of some of my omissions. In
essaying to depict the aspects of an age there is always this pitfall,
omission, which ambuscades the adventurous spirit. For we who
know so little even about ourselves—how can we, without grave
impertinence, boldly say I wish to bring back to the mind of others
an age dead and gone? Everything is so interwoven in life that it is,
for example, an unwarranted arbitrariness to discuss the literature of
this period without brooding on the black and white art of the time,
or the canvases of its painters.
I have worried for some space over Aubrey Beardsley, but I have
not spoken of men like Mr. S. H. Sime, whose work Beardsley so
delighted in. Probably Sidney H. Sime’s work in The Butterfly, The
Idler, Pick-me-Up, Eureka, etc., besides his book illustrations, is in
some ways the most powerfully imaginative of the period. There has
been a Beardsley craze, and most assuredly there will be one day a
Sime craze, when collectors have focussed properly the marvellous
suggestive power of this artist’s work. Unfortunately, scattered up
and down old magazines, much of this work is, as it were, lost for
the moment like Toulouse Lautrec’s drawings in papers like Le Rire.
But when it is garnered up in a worthy book of drawings like the
Beardsley books, the power of Sime’s work will be undoubted.
Fortunately Sime is still amongst us, and occasionally a Dunsany
book brings us fresh evidence of his genius.
Again, I have not alluded to Edgar Wilson’s bizarre and
fascinating decorations of submarine life and Japonesque figures.
Like Shannon, Ricketts, Raven Hill, and others, he received his early
art education at the Lambeth School of Art. At the end of the
eighties he began collecting Japanese prints long before Beardsley
had left school. In fact, Edgar Wilson was one of the pioneers of the
Japanese print in this country—a love for the strange which came
over to England from France. A typical decorative design of
20
Wilson’s is ‘In the Depths of the Sea,’ representing an octopus
rampant over a human skull, beneath which are two strange flat
fish, and in the background a sunken old three-decker with quaintly
carved stern and glorious prow. Pick-me-Up first used his work as it
did that of many another young artist, and in its back files much of
his best work can be found. For The Rambler he did different
designs for each issue, which is probably the only redeeming feature
about that early Harmsworth periodical. The Sketch, Cassell’s,
Scribner’s, and above all The Idler and The Butterfly, are beautified
among other papers by his exotic decorations.

20
Edgar Wilson and his Work, by Arthur
Lawrence, The Idler, July, 1899.

Once more I have not spoken at all of Miss Althea Gyles’s hectic
visions which, in her illustrations for Wilde’s The Harlot’s House,
probably reached the acme of the period’s realisation of the weird.
She is of course really of the Irish symbolists, and not one of the
nineties’ group at all; but, in her Wilde illustrations, she almost
enters the same field as the men of the nineties. Her connection,
too, with the firm of Smithers is another strong excuse for
mentioning her work here. In The Dome both her drawings and
poems appeared, while in the December number for 1898 there is a
note on her symbolism by W. B. Yeats. In all her drawings the fancy
that seems to have such free flight is in reality severely ordered by
the designer’s symbolism. Sometimes it is merely intriguing, as in
drawings like ‘The Rose of God,’ where a naked woman is spread-
eagled against the clouds above a fleet of ships and walled city,
while in other designs the symbolism is full of suggestive loveliness,
as in ‘Noah’s Raven.’ ‘The Ark floats upon a grey sea under a grey
sky, and the raven flutters above the sea. A sea nymph, whose
slender swaying body drifting among the grey waters is a perfect
symbol of the soul untouched by God or by passion, coils the fingers
of one hand about his feet and offers him a ring, while her other
hand holds a shining rose under the sea. Grotesque shapes of little
fishes flit about the rose, and grotesque shapes of larger fishes swim
hither and thither. Sea nymphs swim through the windows of a
sunken town, and reach towards the rose hands covered with rings;
and a vague twilight hangs over all.’ This is explained to represent
the search of man for the fleshly beauty which is so full of illusions
for us all, while the spiritual beauty is ever far away. To this kind of
interpretative design Oscar Wilde’s swan song, The Harlot’s House,
lends itself admirably, and Miss Gyles’s black and white work here
becomes inspired to the standard of Beardsley’s and Sime’s best
work. The shadow effects illustrating the stanzas,

Sometimes a clockwork puppet pressed

A phantom lover to her breast,
Sometimes they seemed to try and sing.

Sometimes a horrible marionette

Came out and smoked its cigarette
Upon the steps like a live thing

must be seen before one can place Althea Gyles’s drawings in their
proper place. It is not a replica of Beardsley, it is not a faint far-off
imitation of a Félicien Rops or Armand Rassenfosse, but something
genuinely original in its shadow-graphic use of masses of black on a
white ground.
Once more, mea culpa, I have paid scant attention to Max
Beerbohm’s caricatures, and I have failed to call attention here to his
earlier and later method of work. I have not even spoken of his little
paper entitled The Spirit of Caricature, wherein he discusses the
spirit of the art he practises. God forgive me! Or yet again what
meed of homage have I yet rendered to Mr. Will Rothenstein’s
lithographic portraits, which are absolutely a necessity to anyone
who would live a while with the shades of these men. Take, for
example, his Liber Juniorum, which alone contains lithographed
drawings of Aubrey Beardsley, Max Beerbohm, and Arthur Symons.
Then there are so many others over whose achievements I must
keep a holy silence, such as Mr. Charles Ricketts and his Dial, which
was published by the Vale Press, and to which John Gray contributed
many poems.
Again, there are the colourists of this group, particularly Walter
Sickert and Charles Conder. The latter, above all, is the colour
comrade to Beardsley’s black and white. His figures are the lovers of
Dowson’s verse, his landscapes and world have all those memories
of the golden time that haunt the brain of John Gray and Theodore
Wratislaw. No note, however short, on the nineties would be
complete without a halt for praise of this painter of a strangely
coloured dolce far niente. For everything in his work, be it on
canvas, silk panel, or dainty fan, is drowsy with the glory of colour
(as Mr. Holbrook Jackson admirably says), ‘colour suggesting form,
suggesting all corporeal things, suggesting even itself, for Conder
never more than hints at the vivid possibilities of life, more than a
hint might waken his puppets from their Laodicean dream.’
Whether an idyllic landscape or a fantastic bal masqué of
Montmartre or an Elysian fête galante was his theme, the work itself
is always permeated with the spirit of Conder. His nude figure ‘Pearl,’
his ‘L’Oiseau Bleu,’ his ‘Femme dans une loge au théâtre,’ are typical
of his successful achievements. The ‘Fickle Love’ fan is but one of
the numerous exquisite works he produced in this branch of art;
while ‘The Masquerade’ is the work of a Beardsley-like fancy which
could colour like Conder.
Like his personality, his work suffered from certain unhappy
moods, and that is what makes so much of it uneven. Born in 1868,
a descendant of Louis Francis Roubiliac, the famous sculptor, whose
work for the figures of our eighteenth century porcelain factories is
so well known, of Conder it may be said, as of all artists with French
blood in them, when he is successful he is irresistible. He might not
be able to draw modern men, but how beautifully he drew the
women of his day can be seen in ‘La Toilette.’ He delighted, indeed,
in designing women wandering in dream gardens, in painting roses
and Princes Charming.
It would be pleasant to travel through this world of delightful
dreams, were we not restricted of set purpose to the literary side of
the movement. And has it not already been done in Mr. Frank
Gibson’s Charles Conder?
Again, some of the publishers who produced the books of these
men have their right to something more than scant mention. To Mr.
Elkin Mathews, particularly as the first publisher of the Rhymers’
Club books and as the issuer of John Gray’s first volume of poetry,
bibliophiles owe a debt of gratitude. In the early days of the nineties
Mr. John Lane became associated with him, until the autumn of 1894
witnessed ‘Parnassus divided into two peaks.’ Later, after the Wilde
débâcle, an extraordinary figure, worthy of a romance, in the person
of the late Leonard Smithers, who was at one time in the legal
profession at Sheffield, took the field as a publisher by way of H. S.
Nichols. He was no mere publisher but a man of considerable
scholarship, who not only issued but finished the Sir Richard Burton
translation of Catullus. Round him, to a considerable extent, the
vanishing group rallied for a little while before Death smote them
one by one. Here is no place to pay due justice to this amiable
Benvenuto Cellini of book printing himself, but it must be
remembered his figure bulks largely in the closing scenes. He kept
21
Dowson from starvation. Beardsley wrote of him as ‘our publisher.’
He, when others failed, had the courage to launch on the English
publishing market the released Wilde’s now famous Ballad of
Reading Gaol. If he did exceed certain rules for himself, he at least
took risks to help others. He was no supine battener on the profits of
books for young ladies’ seminaries. He was a printer, and his
bankruptcy may be said to have closed the period.
 21
It is interesting that in an unpublished letter of
Beardsley’s to Smithers when the latter was
intending to produce The Peacock, an unpublished
quarterly, Beardsley promises him his best work.

Lastly in this chaunt of omissions comes the drama of the

nineties. Unfortunately the drama, in so far as it affects the group of
the nineties with which we are concerned, is almost a nullity. Aubrey
Beardsley once commenced a play, which was never heard of, in
collaboration with Brandon Thomas. Ernest Dowson wrote what
Beardsley called a ‘tiresome’ playlet. John Davidson perpetrated a
number of plays such as Bruce (1886), Smith, a tragic farce (1888),
Scaramouch in Naxos, and two other plays in 1889 when he was
feeling his way, and translated much later as hackwork a play of
François Coppée’s and Victor Hugo’s Ruy Blas. Theodore Peters’
pastoral and other similar trifles only go to show how barren the
group itself was in the dramatist’s talent. Nor can much be said for
such poetic plays as Theodore Wratislaw’s The Pity of Love.
But it must be remembered, as a matter of fact, such a
sweeping conclusion may not only be unjust but even impertinent.
For where in all the theatres of the London of the nineties would the
plays (if they had been written) of these young men have found a
home? Probably the dramatic output of the nineties was nil because
there were no small theatres in London at that date of the type to
give these young men a hope that any works they might write could
be produced. So only at the end of the decade do we see the
dramatic outburst when the Irish movement founded a theatre of its
own and produced J. M. Synge, and also when Miss Horniman gave
Manchester a repertory theatre, and then Stanley Houghton came.
True, at the same period as the nineties Oscar Wilde was
producing plays burlesquing the world of Society, and Bernard Shaw
was getting ready to launch his own works by bombasting every one
else’s; but the little movement of the younger men remained
dramatically dumb. Nothing came even when George Moore
produced The Strike at Arlingford and John Todhunter The Black Cat.
It is a hard thing to believe that all these young men were devoid of
the dramatic instinct. I prefer for my part to blame the London
theatrical world for the lack of those minute theatres which have
become so much a part of the night life of big continental cities and
are so admirably adapted for the production of the works of new
dramatists.
Indeed, the theatrical atmosphere of London at that time was in
its usual perpetual state of stuffiness. There was not even a
beneficent society then such as we now have in the Pioneer Players,
whose theatre (if one may so symbolise it) is the charity house for
emancipated dramatists. Ibsen’s Doll’s House had been produced in
London just before the nineties’ epoch began, and, like anything
new in popular art over here, raised the hue-and-cry. Then, too, the
big ‘star’ curse, which Wilde himself so justly spurned, was
permanently settled on our own insular drama like a stranglehold on
the author.
Outside England, in the big art world of the continent, Schnitzler
22
was beginning in Vienna. Maurice Maeterlinck, in Belgium, had
23
begun too the drama of expressive silences which came to light in
Paris. There were Sudermann and Hauptmann in Germany;
Echegaray in Spain; D’Annunzio in Italy; Ibsen and Björnstjerne
Björnson finishing their work for the Scandinavian drama; while the
playwrights of Paris were, as always, feverishly fabricating all sorts
of movements, as when Paul Fort, a boy of eighteen, founds in 1890
the Théâtre d’Art. But what was going on in England? Pinero’s The
Second Mrs. Tanqueray, Wilde’s Salomé, and his light comedies,
together with stuff by Henry Arthur Jones, Sydney Grundy, etc.,
represented the serious drama. The critics were perturbed, as they
generally are. The musical comedy and its singing, pirouetting
soubrettes deluded the populace into the belief that it had a great
drama, when all these spectacles should really have been housed in
London in spacious tearooms for the benefit of that multitude which
is fond of tinkling melody and teapots. There was not even in
London a single Überbrettlbuhnen, as the Germans mouth it, where
those who love beer could go to hear poets recite their verse à la
Otto Bierbaum, let alone little theatres where what we so dolefully
term the serious drama could be played.

22
Anatol, 1889–90.
23
La Princesse Maleine, 1889.

Even, too, in those days, the newspaper critics, muzzled by the

business department, which has never any wish to lose its theatrical
advertisements, said little, with a few honest exceptions like Bernard
Shaw. Max Beerbohm, when he took over the critical work of Shaw
on The Saturday Review was obviously unhappy. English theatres
rapidly became as elaborate and as pompous as the Church Militant
in its palmy days. They kept growing in size. In London, indeed, the
small theatre never had its boom. Indeed, the nineties was the age
when the big theatres were being built to fill their owners’ pockets
and the men of the nineties themselves (be it for whatever reason
you like) did not produce a single play.
 EPILOGUE
It all seems a long time ago now since those days when Verlaine
was as a lantern for these young men’s feet, to guide them through
the mazes of Art. Thirty years ago and more Wilde was disclosing
‘décolleté spirits of astonishing conversation’; Zola influenced that
Byron of pessimism, Thomas Hardy, to beget Jude the Obscure
(1895), and when the critics assailed him the Wessex giant guarded
a ‘holy silence’ which has denied us up till now an emancipated
novel such as the French and Italians have, though James Joyce
may yet achieve it for us. It was also the age of youth in hansom
cabs looking out on the lights of London’s West End which spread
out before them as in a ‘huge black velvet flower.’ Ibsen, Tolstoy,
Maeterlinck, Nietzsche, D’Annunzio, and Dostoievsky were beginning
to percolate through by means of translations that opened out a new
world into which everybody hastily swarmed. It was an age in which
young men frankly lauded the value of egoism. Indeed, it was
essentially the age of young men. In those days a genital restiveness
which came over from France started the sex equation. A hothouse
fragrance swept across the pudibond wastes of our literature.
Hectics came glorying in their experiences. Richard of the Golden
Girl with his banjo lifts up his voice to chaunt ‘a bruisèd daffodil of
last night’s sin.’ Women like George Egerton in her Keynotes take
questions further than Mrs. Lynn Linton had ever done in the
previous decade. Exoticism, often vulgar when not in master hands,
blabbed out its secrets in works like The Woman who Did.
Confounding the good with the bad, a wail went up against the so-
called gospel of intensity. Sometimes it was in the serious reviews
and weeklies; at another time it was Harry Quilter. Some young
undergraduates at Oxford, even in Aristophanes at Oxford (May,
1894), were filled with ‘an honest dislike for Dorian Gray, Salomé,
The Yellow Book, and the whole of the lackadaisical, opium-cigarette
literature of the day.’ Punch produced a Beardsley Britannia and sang
of:

The Yellow Poster girl looked out

From her pinkly purple heaven,
One eye was blue and one was green,
Her bang was cut uneven.
She had three fingers on one hand,
And the hairs on her head were seven.

And all these criticisms now, all these quarrels, are like old spent
battlefields the sands of gracious time have covered over and hidden
from view. Alone the best work of the period remains; for good art
has no period or special vogue.
Indeed, the elements that destroy the worthless, that winnow
the chaff from the grain, have been at work. For us, indeed, this
landscape has changed from what it once was, and looking at it now
we acquire a new impression which was denied to the critics of the
age itself. Some of us, without a doubt, have gone to the opposite
extreme and prattle about it as an age of platitudes, and accuse a
work of art of being as old as The Yellow Book. One might as well
accuse a violet of being as old as the Greek Anthology. For always,
to those wandering back in the right spirit to those days, there will
come something of the infinite zest which stirred the being of the
men of the nineties to create art. It was such an honest effort that
one has to think of those times when Marlowe and his colleagues
were athrob with æsthetic aspiration to find a similitude. The
nineties, indeed, are a pleasant flower-garden in our literature over
which many strange perfumes float. There are times when one
wishes to retreat into such places, as there are moments when the
backwaters enchant us from the main stream.
It has been said it was an age of nerves. If by this is implied a
keener sensitiveness to certain feelings pulsating in the art of this
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