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THE MEN OF THE NINETIES

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THE MEN OF THE NINETIES

BY
BERNARD MUDDIMAN

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
NEW YORK
1921

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All rights reserved

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1

The day Beardsley left his stool and ledgerin a London insurance office and betookhimself seriously to the illustration of thatstrange comic world of Congreve, a new manifestationof English art blossomed. It had,no doubt, been a long time germinating in theminds of many men, and there had beennumerous signs pointing the way on which theartistic tendencies of the nineties would travel.For example, just about the same time asBeardsley’s eighteenth year, a coterie of youngmen, fresh from the Varsity in many cases,made their appearance in London openly proclaimingthe doctrine of art for art’s sake underthe ægis of Oscar Wilde. So in the last age ofhansom cabs and dying Victorian etiquette,these young men determined that the ratherdull art and literary world of London shouldflower like another Paris.

If, for the sake of making a beginning, one2must fix on that memorable day when Beardsleyburnt his boats as the date of the opening ofthe period of the nineties, it must be rememberedthat this arbitrary limitation of themovement is rather a convenience than a necessity.To divide up anything so continuous asliterature and art into sections like a bookcaseis uncommonly like damming up a portion of astream to look at the fish in it. It breaks thecontact between what was before and whatcame after. However, as one must go a longway back to investigate accurately how a newmovement in art arises, and as it is tedious tofollow up all the clues that lead to the source,it will be perhaps as well not to worry toomuch over the causes of the movement or overthe influences from which it arose. Let usaccept the fact so well pointed out by Mr.W. G. Blaikie Murdoch in The Renaissanceof the Nineties, that the output of t

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