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The French Coterie of the Savoy 1896

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Thomas Jay Garbáty
Thomas Jay Garbáty*
Affiliation:
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
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Extract

The yellow nineties have always been regarded as fascinating yet also as something of a literary liability, a movement that took more from the world than it gave in return. And yet, although Art for Art may have rested in the “splendid isolation” of individual emotions, as it often did, for instance, in the poems of Arthur Symons, it was, in its debt to the French Symbolists, to Gautier, Verlaine, Mallarmé, Rimbaud, to the perfectionists like Flaubert, and in its over-all aspects to Baudelaire, truly international. There had been, of course, foreign influence on the Victorians, but never had there been such complete sympathy of interests as that which now bound the two intellectual groups facing each other across the water. Cultural barriers changed into cultural bridges, the fear of mal de mer was conquered, and the Channel was crossed and recrossed. London became a Quartier of Paris; Dowson and Wilde walked the streets dressed à la Bohème, the Beardsley group liked to think of themselves as habitués of the Café Royal, and Verlaine found an audience more rapt than that of the brasseries in the Boul. Mich. There was a new union of forces. The powerful influences of France can be traced nowhere better than in the life story of the Savoy, which, in its brief spurt of brilliant life in 1896, was more truly representative of the time than the Yellow Book. It would not be rash to call the Savoy an Anglo-French periodical, and in this, certainly, the first of its kind.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 75 , Issue 5 , December 1960 , pp. 609 - 615
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1960

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References

1 Arthur Symons, “Aubrey Beardsley” (Author's page proofs, Princeton Univ. Library, Symons collection), p. 14. I am indebted to Mr. Alexander Clark, Curator of Rare Books at the Princeton University Library, and Mr. Herbert Cahoon, Curator of Autograph Manuscripts at the Pierpont Morgan Library, for their kind permission to study the manuscript collections.

2 Arthur Symons, “Charles Conder” (Author's page proofs found in Princeton Univ. Library Symons collection).

3 Grant Richards, Author Hunting (London, 1934), p. 20.

4 Vincent O'Sullivan, Aspects of Wilde (New York, 1936), p. 102.

5 R. A. Walker, ed., Letters from Aubrey Beardsley to Leonard Smithers (London, 1937), introduction, viii. Hereafter cited as Walker.

6 Mark Longaker, Ernest Dowson (Philadelphia, 1945), p. 171.

7 “Si pour être descendus une fois dans un hôtel de la plage, entre deux trains, vous restez incrédules à l‘égard d'un pittoresque trop vanté, venez et revenez au Puits-Salé, le matin, le samedi, jour de marché, et le soir, surtout en automne, quand le cadran de l'horloge s'allume au Café des Tribunaux, dont la terrasse offrit ses tables, ses encriers, à tant d'artistes anglais de l‘ère victorienne,” J. E. Blanche, Dieppe (Paris, 1927), p. 40.

8 Will Rothenstein, Men and Memories (London, 1931), i, 246–247.

9 Rothenstein, p. 250.

10 Morgan Library MS. (A.L.S. Dowson to Arthur Moore).

11 Morgan Library MS. (A.L.S. Dowson to Arthur Moore).

12 Morgan Library MS. (A.L.S. Dowson to Arthur Moore).

13 Walker, Letter xxviii.

14 Letter from Dowson to Henry Davray, published in Longaker, Ernest Dowson, p. 277.

15 Morgan Library MS. (A.L.S. Dowson to Arthur Moore).

16 Princeton Univ. Library MS. (Arthur Symons collection, A.L.S. Mallarmé to Symons), letter 1.

17 Thomas Jay Garbâty, “An Appraisal of Arthur Symons by Pater and Mallarmé,” N&Q, vii (May 1960), 187–188. From the Princeton Univ. Library Symons collection.

18 Quoted in Longaker, p. 280.

19 Morgan Library MS. (A.L.S. Dowson to Arthur Moore).

20 Morgan Library MS. (A.L.S. Dowson to Arthur Moore).

21 Princeton Univ. Library MS. 15267 (A.L.S. of Hubert Crackanthorpe). The first six paragraphs are printed in Richards, Author Hunting, p. 18.

22 Grant Richards, Memories of a Misspent Youth (London, 1932), p. 342.

23 Princeton Univ. Library MS. 15267 (signed card of Hubert Crackanthorpe).

24 Richards, Memories, p. 344.

25 Princeton Univ. Library MS. AM 14907 (A.L.S. of Vincent O'Sullivan).