THE LITERATURE OF THE NINETIES.

 By " Pedagogue."

"The New Drama," upon which I discoursed last week, first established itself in England during the last decade of last century. This development of the drama was no isolated literary occurrences depending solely for its character and content upon the mechanical changes in the theatre, but a part of a wide and general literary activity and efflorescence which has earned " The Eighteen Nineties " a particular place in English literary history. We are today, indeed, in the most direct and immediate manner, the children of the 1890's. Some of us have lived through that interesting decade. Others born in the nineties or later, have been brought up directly under the influence of the literary traditions which were then established. Most of the significant names among contemporary writers are those whose reputations arose and were established during the nineties, or during the decade immediately succeeding that period and directly under its influences. So, while the curious are turning up William Archer's "The Old Drama and the New" in the School of Arts library for further light upon the "New Drama" and its development, it may be well for me to pay some further attention to the general literary history of the Eighteen Nineties.

For this survey of the "wonderful Nineties" I shall rely chiefly upon Mr Holbrook Jackson's book on the period which is a model of literary history and an excellent interpretation of the "spirit of the time" of which he writes. Such comprehensive treatment of a single decade of literary history though unusual requires no apology. "That decade," as he explains, "had singled itself out, the Eighteen Nineties having already become a distinctive epoch in the minds of those who concern themselves with art and ideas." It is the period that has become famous as the "Period of the Decadence," as the "Fin de Siecle," the end of the century which produced such peculiar movements in art and literature as to cut itself off from preceding decades, claiming particular attention. No other decade of the 19th or any other century has displayed such a wealth and variety of literary and artistic effort. So striking, so widespread, and so powerful were the achievements of this decade that they created a veritable Renaissance in English life and letters.

To Mr. Holbrook Jackson, who writes of the age as a contemporary who has lived on into a later age, the awakening of the nineties appears as "the realisation of a possibility." Various causes material and intellectual had produced both a capacity and a desire for further development. There was a sense of change, an unrest, which shewed itself in resistance to orthodox views in literature no less than in religion and in industry. And so while "the younger generation hammered at the gates" and strove by novel means to establish themselves alongside living writers of older standing and well-established reputation, new ideas in social and industrial criticism also crystallised themselves into new movements and new organisations. It was "as certainly a period of decadence as it was a period of renaissance." In one way it completed the Romantic tendency of the writers of the "Machine Age" to escape from the hideous reality of the world around them, to the aesthetic joys of their own imaginings and of their delving into the fancies of the past. But alongside of this, and never wholly separated from it, was a new vitality, which showed itself in a freshened interest in life and new sensations, and which also showed itself in a growing social conscience, criticising and then launching a direct attack upon the roots of society. " Life aroused curiosity," says Mr. Holbrook Jackson. " People became enthusiastic about the way it should be used. And in proof of sincerity there were opinionated battles—most of them inconclusive. . . . It was an epoch of experiment, with some achievement and some remorse. The former is to be seen in certain lasting works of art and in the acceptance of new, and sometimes revolutionary social ideas, the latter in the repentant attitude of so many poets and other artists of the time who, after tasting more life than was good for them, reluctantly sought peace in an escape from material concerns."

The chief characteristics of the period Mr. Jackson sums up under three heads —"the so-called decadence; the introduction of a sense of fact into literature and art ; and the development of a transcendental "View of Social Life." These characteristics were not always separate. Oscar Wilde, chief of the Decadents, who devoted himself to the cultivation of æstheticism and was the chief exponent of art for art's sake, also wrote the "Ballad of Reading Gaol," which expresses something of the second characteristic, and "The Soul of Man Under Socialism," which directly expresses the third. Thus alongside of the decadence, "the atmosphere of the 1890's was alert with new ideas which sought to find expression in the average national life. If luxury had its art and its traffic, so had a saner and more balanced social consciousness. If one demanded freedom for an individual expression tending towards degeneration and perversion, the other demanded a freedom which should give the common man opportunities for the redemption of himself and his kind. Side by side with the poseur worked the reformer, urged on by the revolutionist." Alongside of "The Yellow Book," which was "associated with all that was bizarre and queer in art and life, with all that was outrageously modern," appeared Robert Blatchford's "Clarion" with its appeal for socialism.

Despite the influence of the Decadents, "it was an era of hope and action. People thought anything might happen ; and for the young any happening sufficiently new was good." And again—" Ideas were in the air. Things were not what they seemed, and there were visions about. The Eighteen Nineties was the decade of a thousand movements." These ideas and movements showed a marked consciousness of their own novelty and originality. The adjective "new" which we have inherited as a title of modernity first then came into vogue. The "New Drama" we have already examined, but the phrase became general. Grant Allen wrote of the "New Hedonism", H. D. Traill, of "The New Fiction," opening his essay with the words "Not to be new is, in these days, to be nothing." Then there were the "New Paganism." the "New Voluptuousness," the "New Remorse," the "New Spirit." the "New Realism," the "New Unionism," the "New Party," the "New Age" and the "New Review " among the periodicals of the time, and last, but not least, the "New Woman." Many of these phrases still keep their currency to-day. More recently we have added the "New Psychology," the "New Education," and even the " New Church."

Sufficient has perhaps been said to indicate the ferment of thought and of fancy which marked the literary history of the period. "Evidence of the stimulating atmosphere of the period," observes Mr. Jackson, " is to be found in the number of writers who sprang into existence out of the Zeitgeist of the decade, as people in this country were beginning to call the spirit of the times." Chief among the decadents of the period were Oscar Wilde, Max Beerbohm, G. S. Street, Charles Wibley, Richard le Gallienne, John Davidson and Arthur Symons. W. B. Yeats and the poets of the Celtic Revival also owed something to the stimulus of the times. Upon a wider field, J. M. Barrie, Conan Doyle, Maurice Hewlett, Owen Seaman, H G. Wells. G. B. Shaw, Henry Newbolt, Rudyard Kipling, A. E. Housman, Joseph Conrad, Israel Zangwill, Stephen Phillips and many more spring from the soil of the 1890's. Nor has the influence of this period of refined expression, decadence and social earnestness yet worn itself out.

Morning Bulletin (Rockhampton, Qld. : 1878 - 1954), Friday 30 January 1925, page 11