Coasting Bohemia
9781465665874
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
The papers which compose this volume make no claim to any sort of ordered plan in their composition. They reflect in some measure the varied activities of a life that has been passed in close association with more than one of the arts, and therein lies their sole title to so much of coherence as they may be found to possess. Lord Beaconsfield once defined critics as men who had failed in art. The reproach, however, is not always deserved, for youth is often confident in its judgment of others at a time when it is still too timorous to make any adventure of its own. For myself I may confess that I had adopted the calling of a critic long before I had found the courage to make even the most modest incursion into the field of authorship. My first essays in journalism, made at a time when I was still a student at the bar, were chiefly concerned with the art of painting, and I look back now with feelings almost of dismay at the spirit of reckless assurance in which I then assumed to measure and appraise the achievement of contemporary masters. A little later in my career I was brought into still closer contact with the art of the theatre, and in both these worlds, as well as in that of literature itself, I was fortunate in the formation of many valued and enduring friendships which have enabled me, in such of the following chapters as bear a distinctively biographical character, to record my personal impressions of some of the notable figures in the literature and art of the later Victorian era. The reader who accompanies me in my voyage along the shores of the Bohemia of that time will quickly realise that it is not quite the Bohemia of to-day. Indeed since Shakespeare first boldly conceded to the kingdom a seaboard, each succeeding age, and almost every generation, has claimed the liberty to refashion this enchanted country in accordance with its own ideals. The coast-line has been recharted by every voyager who has newly cruised upon its encompassing seas, and in recent days its boundaries have been enlarged by the occasional incursions of Society which has lately condescended to include the concerns of art within the sphere of its patronage. But although no longer retaining its old outlines upon the map, there is enough of continuity in the character of the inhabitants and in the subjects of their preoccupation to render a brief survey of earlier conditions of something more than merely archaeological interest. If much has been gained, something also has been lost, and the traveller who survives to set down the experiences of that earlier time may perhaps be pardoned if he cannot always accept the changes which have transformed the face of the country, or modified the mental attitude of its citizens, as improvements upon the prospect that first dawned upon his vision forty years ago.
