Late victorian decadence

Late Victorian Decadence Author(s): Russell M. Goldfarb Source: The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 20, No. 4 (Summer, 1962), pp. 369-373 Published by: Wiley on behalf of The American Society for Aesthetics Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/427899 Accessed: 11-01-2018 18:28 UTC REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: http://www.jstor.org/stable/427899?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms

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RUSSELL M. GOLDFARB

Late Victorian Decadence

controversy, controversy that has perhaps obscured decadence in the Journal of Aesthetics and agreement among critics as to the meaning of decadence. If one Art Criticism show the pressing needfundamental for a understand what people do mean by third article on the same subject. is IntoSepthe term, it is necessary to determine its tember, 1958, Clyde de L. Ryals wrote "Tosignificance by looking closely at only releward a Definition of Decadent as Applied to British Literature of the Nineteenth Cenvant accretions. The simplest way to do this is to isolate the separate traits various tury" and in December, 1959, Robert L.

TWO RECENT ARTICLES on late Victorian

Peters wrote toward an "un-definition" of

writers have attributed to decadence.

the same term and had this to say of Ryals:Popular contemporary impressions were revealed in satires written during the nine"I am questioning not the general direction

ties. Max Beerbohm's essay in the first volof his conclusions but the accuracy and profundity of his statements, which are atume of The Yellow Book, "A Defence of best confusing and at worst muddled." TheCosmetics," is a case in point. Using a traditime has come, I think, to draw breath and determine if our knowledge of decadence is indeed so slight that we must speak of or listen to confusion and muddle.

It is my purpose to give an account of

tional satiric device whereby he says one

thing and means another, Beerbohm begins his essay with the remark, "Nay, but it is useless to protest. Artifice must queen it once more in the town...."1 Beerbohm

means to protest about artifice because he thinks it to be the decadent instrument of and what it has meant in descriptions of Victorian fin de siecle literature, the poetryinsincerity, imposture, and artificiality. and prose of the eighteen-nineties. Al"And, truly, of all the good things that will happen with the full renascence of costhough occupying critics in the past, questions such as the following will here be metics, one of the best is that surface will ignored because they are tangential to defifinally be severed from soul."2 Artifice nition: Is decadent literature indicative of makes a woman "blush for you, sneer for moral insanity or what Max Nordau in you, laugh or languish for you."3 That is to Entartung (1892) called sittlicher wahnsay, artifice helps to create a pose; it hides sinn? Did decadence have the strength ofall a natural emotions. Beerbohm thought literary movement? Is decadence merelythe an most distinctive quality of decadent imitation or weakened repetition of suliterature was artifice. perior art forms? Does Victorian decadence Better known than Beerbohm's essay, and have roots in French or English literature? probably the best known of the satires These questions have engendered much written about the eighteen-nineties is how the word "decadence" has been used

Robert Hitchens' The Green Carnation. To

Hitchens, decadence was unconventional and exhibitionist behavior. One of his charRUSSELL M. GOLDFARB is assistant professor of English at Western Michigan University. acters says, "I have been an aesthete. I have


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lain upon hearth-rugs and eaten passion flowers. I have clothed myself in breeches of white samite, and offered my friends

M.

GOLDFARB

thoroughly artistic and in harmony with one another."10

Not one of these satirists' decadent heroes

conforms to conventional patterns of Vicyellow jonquils instead of afternoon tea."4

The same person exclaims:

torian thought and behavior. G. S. Street clearly considered the lust for unusual ex-

Elevenl I had no idea it was so early. I am going perience one of the most characteristic at, to sit up all night with Reggie, saying mad scarlet tributes of the decadent. Tubby, the hero of things, such as Walter Pater loves, and waking the night with silver silences.... Let me be brilStreet's The Autobiography of a Boy, has a liant, dear boy, or I feel that I shall weep for theory of life which compels him to be sheer wittiness, and die, as so many have died, sometimes drunk; he is wearily indifferent with all my epigrams still in me.6

It is noteworthy that Hitchens' attention is also engaged by the beliefs that art is in-

to all things, and he desires to be regarded

as a man to whom no chaste woman should

be allowed to speak; he feels old, sad, and

dependent of morality and that art is more weary, and distrusts people who are artistic important than morality: "There is nothing because his own devotion to art goes far good and nothing evil. There is only art. deeper than theirs. When Tubby's father

... Forget your Catechism and remembertells him either to settle down or go to

the words of Flaubert and of Walter Pater."6

Canada, Tubby decides to hunt game in

But although Hitchens says decadence is amoral, one of his contemporaries said

Canada. He remarks, "I have never killed

a man, and it may be an experience-the lust for slaughter."11 Rather than marry, think it is immoral. settle down, and take a share in the world's John Davidson expresses this notionwork, in Tubby chooses to pursue a quest for unusual experience. his burlesque novel, A Full and True AcMany of the ideas held by fin de siecle count of the Wonderful Mission of Earl Lavender, which lasted One Night and One satirists were extensions of impressions which were current in the eighteen-seventies Day. A character says, "I knew a woman who read French, and she ran away from and eighties about certain kinds of literaher husband, and died of consumption. For ture. For instance, Max Beerbohm's opinion it's in the language. My husband says it'sof decadence as dependent upon artifice, rotten and corrupt, and he ought to know, insincerity, and imposture was an echo of being a chemist by examination."7 Another Robert Buchanan's opinion concerning Pre-

that people who are opposed to decadence

character is of the same opinion, "It's fang-Raphaelite fleshly mysticism.12 Robert de-seeaycle that does it, my dear, and educa-Hichens' satire of decadent eccentricity and exhibitionism was a continuation of the tion, and reading French."8 ridicule established in the eighties by The immorality of decadent literature especially concerned Jocelyn Quilp, whose George Du Maurier's caricatured aesthetes in Punch and Gilbert and Sullivan's PaBaron Verdigris: A Romance of the Retience (1881). These ideas about Preversed Direction is dedicated "equally to Fin-de-Siecyl-ism, the Sensational Novel, Raphaelitism and aestheticism were intensified in the nineties when they were and the Conventional Drawing-Room Ballad." Probably with Oscar Wilde's defenseconnected with decadence, which was more important in terms of popular appeal than of The Picture of Dorian Gray in mind, Quilp declares in the introduction to his either of its immediate predecessors. satire, "My great object in this book, as in But there is a sharp distinction between life, is to be Very Moral."9 Then with truedecadence as a popular and as a literary satiric exaggeration Quilp goes on to draw term. The authors of satires with market appeal had no use for the vocabulary and a character, the Baron Verdigris, who is standards of formal criticism. They conmore criminal and more perverse than cerned themselves with exploiting popular Dorian Gray. The Baron even pushes decorum to its extreme, for he has "a passion ideas about whatever single quality of decafor having all the surroundings of his crimes dence best suited their purposes. To Max


Victorian

Decadence

Beerboh m, decadence was artifice; to Robert Hichens, it was unconventional and ex-

371

disease."15 Decadent literature was neither

simple, nor sane, nor perfectly proporit was rather the expression of "an hibitionist behavior; to John Davidson tioned; and intense Jocelyn Quilp, it was immorality; to G. S. self-consciousness, a restless curiosity in research, an over-subtilizing refineStreet, the lust for unusual experience. After 1900 most of the people who wrote about ment upon refinement, a spiritual and decadence defined the term for use as a moral perversity."16 Six years later, in The standard of literary criticism. They put toSymbolist Movement in Literature, Symons gether several attributes common to decawrote that decadence was merely an interdent literature and formed a definition. lude, a novelty of style. Whereas he once considered decadence the newest movement Two essays written in the nineties, however,

did anticipate the transfer of popular ideas in literature, he now writes, "something

about decadence -into what shall be called

which is vaguely called Decadence [has]

come into being."17 Symons changed his In a letter published in the second volmind because he thought the early literaume of The Yellow Book, Max Beerbohm ture of the nineties was only preparatory explains the satirical intent of "A Defence to a serious attempt "to spiritualize literaof Cosmetics." He explains his intentions, ture" under the banner of Symbolism; but 3eerbohm says, because his essay on coshe had once been eloquent in propagandiz-

its critical idea.

ing decadence: "To fix the last fine shade, metics was not signed D. Cadent or Parrar Docks and it was thought to be a defense in- the quintessence of things; to fix it fleetstead of a condemnation of decadent values.

3eerbohm has to "assure the affrighted mob that it [was] the victim of a hoax," that his essay, "so grotesque in subject, in opinion so flippant, in style so widely affected, was meant for a burlesque upon the 'precious' school of writers."13 In his explanatory letter Beerbohm writes, There are signs that our English literature has reached that point, when, like the literature of all nations that have been, it must fall at length into the hands of the decadents. The qualities that I tried in my essay to travesty-paradox and marivaudage, lassitude, a love of horror and all unusual things, a love of argot and archaism and

ingly; to be a disembodied voice, and yet

the voice of a human soul: that is the ideal of Decadence."18

Both Max Beerbohm and Arthur Symons interpreted decadence as a literary term in the eighteen-nineties. Beerbohm's interpretation was somewhat murky: he thought decadent literature was unusual and mysterious. Of Arthur Symons, Holbrook Jackson has said, "during the earlier phase his

vision of the decadent idea was certainly

clearer than it was some years later, when

he strove to differentiate decadence and symbolism."19 Later critics who have dealt

with decadence have been largely influenced some by one, some by another of les jeunes dcri- by Symons' earlier remarks. vains?4 The chapter of Holbrook Jackson's The the mysteries of style-are not all these displayed,

Vague as he is in use of a phrase such as "mysteries of style," Beerbohm considers decadence a term descriptive of certain literary qualities. Arthur Symons clearly illuminates the contemporary impression of decadence in an essay of 1893 entitled "The Decadent Movement in Literature": "If what we call

Eighteen-Nineties entitled "The Decadence" is an extended description of Sy-

mons 'early definition of decadence, a defini-

tion which is highly praised: "with the

passing of time the term has come to stand for a definite phase of artistic consciousness,

and that phase is precisely what Arthur

Symons described it to be... ."20 Jackson presents the chief characteristics of deca-

the classic is indeed the supreme art-those dence in summary fashion as (1) Perversity qualities of perfect simplicity, perfect (2)sanArtificiality (3) Egoism, and (4) Curiity, perfert proportion, the supreme osity. quali-Decadent literature, he observes, was ties-then this representative literature of studded with the literary jewelry of pur-

today, interesting, beautiful, novel as it is, is really a new and beautiful and interesting

ple patches and fine phrases. The decadents

wrote of London rather than of the coun-


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RUSSELL

try because the city represented their love of the artificial. They adored the color white because white was symbolic of the debauchee's love of virginity. Jackson adds that the decadents also loved the cleanli-

M.

GOLDFARB

there can be no absolute truth, no absolute

beauty, and no timeless deity. A sign of decadent literature is praise of experience rather than praise of a timeless deity. To say of decadence that aesthetic values

ness in unclean things and presented the sweetness of unsavoury alliances in volumes of "hot verse" or ornate prose-"hot verse" being used in the modern sense of poems dealing passionately with sexual themes. Other ideas are dealt with by Samuel

tanic, and horrible in the decadent scheme of values, and the romantic castle of Dorian

Chew in "Aestheticism and 'Decadence.'"

Gray in particular gives expression to this.

He has this to say about Arthur Symons' verse, which he considers representative of English decadence: "In [Symons'] poetry there is a remoteness from contemporary society that expresses the point of view of the entire group of 'Decadents.' "21 Social

prevail over moral values is to agree with Joad. Aaotos Ojala expresses this thesis in Part One of Aestheticism and Oscar Wilde.

There is something static, narcissistic, sa-

"The spirit which inhabits Wilde's Ro-

mantic Castle is the spirit of Decadence. Romantics still recognize the values of moral and ethical ideas, but to the deca-

dents art and intellect are the supreme realities."25 Jerome Hamilton Buckley carproblems did not concern the fin de sibcle ries this idea further; he says decadent liter-

writers whose poetry was characterized by "the substitution of suggestion for statement; the effects of 'correspondence' of

ature was "animated by a conscious will to

explore the dark underside of experience,

with which the Decadent himself associated

words and music and color; the dim sadness

immorality and evil."26 The chapter entitled "The Decadence and After" in The and misty unwholesomeness; the profound sensuality; and the reliance upon symVictorian Temper is Buckley's attempt to characterize the literature of Wilde and his bols."22 These characteristics, supplemented later disciples, Beardsley and his friends, by qualities of morbidity, perversity, and "ephemeral sensualities," comprise Chew'sthe members of the Rhymers' Club, and the notion of decadence. contributors to The Yellow Book. He says that the decadents, who were aware of their The "misty unwholesomeness" of which attributes and proud of their title, sufChew speaks is a reference to decadent immorality or amorality. C. E. M. Joadfered world-weariness, emphasized the artifice of art, looked to art rather than nature takes a stand on the issue of morality in Decadence: "Once the preoccupation with for their images and themes, sought the sexual morality is transcended, the allegedrarer enticements of sin, stressed all that was artificial, and were markedly addicted corerspondence between decadence and lack of morality ceases to have any very to imposture (in the sense that they lacked obvious meaning. Writers who seem deca- sincerity). Buckley's analysis of decadence dent are not immoral; the authors of books is very similar to analyses presented in two unpublished doctoral dissertations-Robert in which morality is 'loose' are not decadent."23 Exclusive of sexual morality, to be D. Brown's "Joris-Karl Huysmans and the decadent is not to be immoral. And it would be absurd to call a man decadent

Bodley Head Decadents," submitted in 1952 at Indiana University, and Clyde de L.

solely because he goes to bed with somebody Ryals' "Decadence in British Literature Before the Fin de Siecle," submitted in 1957 else's wife or with nobody's wife. the University of Pennsylvania. The chief tenet of decadence, Joadat feels, Brown contends that English decadence is that "experience is valuble or is at least to be valued for its own sake, irrespective can be identified by the serious use of diabolism and artificiality. The typical deof the quality or kind of the experience."24 cadentderegisters literary sophistication, boreAs a Christian, Joad thinks the doctrine dom, lassitude, an unquenchable desire for plorable, for if the flux of the experience becomes an end value in life, and if everynew sensations, perversity, and neurotic inthing changes and dissolves at a touch, thenterests. Ryals says much the same thing:


Victorian

Decadence

decadence

373

1 Max Beerbohm, "A Defence of Cosmetics," The is characterized

on the pleasure of the senses; a fascination with the morbid, the strange, and the un-

natural; the tendency to remain passive in the face of action and to preconceive reality."27 Having echoed so many critics, it is indeed difficult to understand why

Yellow Book, I (April, 1894), 65. 2 Ibid., p. 71. 3 Ibid., p. 78.

4 Robert Hitchens, The Green Carnation (New

York, 1895), p. 196. 5 Ibid., p. 157. e6Ibid., p. 199.

7 John Davidson, Earl Lavender (London, 1895),

73. three years ago Ryals wrote, "Almost p.no

one has seen fit to define what the word

decadent as applied to English literature of the late nineteenth century means."28

Fortunately, several people have seen fit to describe decadence and their repetitive descriptions clearly indicate fundamental agreement among them as to the meaning

8 Ibid., p. 68.

9 Jocelyn Quilp, Baron Verdigris (London, 1894),

p. 15.

10 Ibid., p. 61.

11 G. S. Street, The Autobiography of a Boy

(London, 1894), p. 110. 12 Under the signature of "Thomas Maitland," Robert Williams Buchanan published his view of "The Fleshly School of Poetry" in the Contemporary Review for October, 1871. The article was reprinted

of the word. Thus, when any given criticin expanded form as The Fleshly School of Poetry

uses the term, he can be assured a fairly knowledgeable audience. We understand

(London, 1872).

13 Max Beerbohm, "A Letter to the Editor," The

Yellow Book, II (July, 1894), 282. that late Victorian decadence refers to po14 Ibid., p. 284. etry and prose which does not emphasize 16 Arthur Symons, "The Decadent

Movement in Literature," Harper's New Monthly Magazine, cerns, but which does emphasize the value LXXXVII (November, 1893), 859. 16 Ibid., pp. 858-859. to be gained both from experience of all 17Arthur Symons, The Symbolist Movement in sorts and from indulgence in a life of sensa-Literature (2nd ed. rev., New York, 1908), p. 6. 18 Arthur Symons, "The Decadent Movement in tions. Because of this emphasis, decadent literature is animated by the exploration of Literature," p. 862. 19 Holbrook Jackson, The Eighteen-Nineties (Lon. immoral and evil experiences; never does don, 1922), p. 55.

philosophical, historical, or intellectual con-

it preach morality, nor does it strongly in- 20 Ibid., p. 57. 21 Samuel Chew, "Aestheticism and 'Decadence,'" sist upon ethical responsibilities. Decadent A Literary History of England, ed. A. C. Baugh literature is characterized by artistic con(New York, 1948), p. 1483. cern for the morbid, the perverse, the sorIbid. did, the artificial, the beauty to be found C. E. M. Joad, Decadence (London, 1948), p. 64. Ibid., p. 95. in the unnatural, and the representation of the cleanliness in unclean things; it is char-

acterized by a self-conscious and weary contempt for social conventions such as

truth and marriage, by an acceptance of

Beauty as a basis for life. Until this under-

standing of decadence is shown to be inadequate, it hardly seems necessary to write toward a new definition.

25Aaotos Ojala, Aestheticism and Oscar Wilde,

Part I (Helsinki, 1954), p. 215.

26Jerome Hamilton Buckley, The Victorian Temrn per (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1951), pp. 230-231. 27Clyde de L. Ryals, "Decadence in British Literature Before the Fin de Siecle," An unpub. diss. (University of Pennsylvania, 1957), p. 67. 28 "Toward a Definition of Decadent as Applied to British Literature of the Nineteenth Century," JAAC, XVII (September, 1958), 85.


Late victorian decadence

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