The Poets of the Nineties

This year's survey involves no great quantity of materials--just four--albeit the quality in that quartet is high. James G. Nelson's Publisher to the Decadents: Leonard Smithers in the Careers of Beardsley, Wilde, Dowson (Pennsylvania State Univ.Press) is at once indisputably authoritative and eminently readable. This book completes a trilogy concerned with literary publishing during the 1890s, the earlier volumes addressing (1) John Lane and the Bodley Head, and (2) the firm conducted by Lane's quondam partner, Elkin Mathews, once each man went his own way as a publisher. Although few would dispute that Lane's productions, those that we remember, were controversial, and that what Mathews captained was somewhat more tame, the name of Smithers has repeatedly been mentioned in connection with Victorian pornography, shady dealings toward his authors--and, often, particularly evil genius relationships with Beardsley and Dowson, if not so significantly with Wilde. Now Nelson turns more firmly and attentively to documentary evidence in the cases of Smithers' relationships with the figures highlighted in his latest book, and from that mass of evidence, magisterially sifted and synthesized, emerges a rather different portrait of Smithers the professional and the man, with valuable illuminations on the careers of the relevant artists.

I have commented elsewhere in 1890s surveys that Beardsley numbers among a group who, although they are not remembered for many, or any, productions in verse, are "poets." Nelson makes us more acutely aware of all the support, financial and moral, Smithers offered the dying graphic artist. Beardsley was stimulated to produce some of his finest work during his last two years, for example, his illustrations to Smithers's editions of The Rape of the Lock and Lysistrata, and his designs for Dowson's Verses (the covers) and The Pierrot of the Minute (illustrations), as well as Vincent O'Sullivan's The Houses of Sin (covers). These books have become collectors' items, as much for Beardsley's art as for literary content, and other Smithers volumes with Beardsley graphics are equally sought. Nelson also sheds light on Smithers' uses of Beardsley materials after the artist's death, uses which called forth severe censure from several of Beardsley's friends and his mother, although Mabel Beardsley, Aubrey's sister, and O'Sullivan remained steadfast believers in Smithers' kindly intentions toward the artist and his posthumous reputation--though, as Nelson adds, that reputation fattened Smithers' coffers while it maintained Beardsley's renown. Similarly, Smithers' support of the publishing endeavors of Dowson and Wilde is clarified in Nelson's deft portrayals. Without Nelson's figures, for example, we might be less aware that The Ballad of Reading Gaol became a best seller, enriching Smithers and Wilde, just as we might not learn how great were the financial losses that caused Smithers' disastrous final years. Good indexing is another plus.

Natural companion reading appears in Jad Adams's Madder Music, Stronger Wine: The Life of Ernest Dowson, Poet and Decadent (Tauris). All biographical work on Dowson owes much to the late Mark Longaker's labors of a lifetime, as well as to the edition of Dowson's letters, ed. Desmond Flower and Henry Maas (1967), with a Flower follow-up (1984), which includes additional letters from Dowson to his great friend, Charles Sayle. These works Adams uses judiciously. His book should put to rest much of the "Dowson legend"--of the youth who wasted his artistic abilities in drink, drugs, and debauchery, without ever fulfilling his promise. This legend presumably commenced with Arthur Symons' essay on Dowson, "A Literary Causerie," actually a review of Dowson's volume of poems, Verses, in the Savoy for August 1896. Symons had given Dowson his draft, to which Dowson made no major alterations, and certainly no changes on content. Thus, like Poe, who often promoted accounts in which circumstances were exaggerated or falsified, Dowson permitted the creation of distortions that have persisted. Likewise down the pipes goes the...