"Linger longer, LUCY, Linger longer, LOO. How I'd like to linger longer, Linger longer, LOO!"--_Old Ballad._
I suppose there is no one that has not wished, from Time to Time, that someone else had lived in another Age than his own. I myself have often felt that it would have been nice to live in 1894; to have seen the "_Living Pictures_" at the old _Empire_, to have strained my Eyes for a glimpse of _Mrs. Patrick Campbell_, broken my Cane applauding _May Yohé_, and listened to the _Blue Hungarians_ while dining, on a Sunday, at that quaint old Tavern _the Savoy_. At that time the Beauties from New York had not quite lost their Vogue. CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS, who discovered the United States, left it to the Prince of WALES to invent their inhabitants: personally, I am more implected with their Botany; and am, indeed, at this moment, engaged in a study of the Trees in America. Much of this remote Period must remain mobled in the Mists of Antiquity, but we know that about then flourished the Sect that was to win for itself the Title of the "_Decadents_." What exactly this Title signified I suppose no two entomologists will agree. But we may learn from the Caricatures of the day what the _Decadents_ were in outward semblance; from the Lampoons what was their mode of life. Nightly they gathered at any of the Theatres where the plays of Mr. WILDE were being given. Nightly, the stalls were fulfilled by Row upon Row of neatly-curled Fringes surmounting Button-holes of monstrous size. The contrasts in the social Condition of the time fascinate me. I used to know a boy whose mother was actually present at the "first night" of _Charley's Aunt_, and became enamoured of _Mr. Penley_. By such links is one Age joined to another!
I should like to have been at a Private View of the "_New English Art Club_." There was _Crotchet_, the young Author of the _Mauve Camellia_; there were _Walter Sickert_, the veteran R.A.; _George Moore_, the romanticist; _Charles Hawtrey_, the tragedian, and many another good fellow. The period of 1894 must have been delicious.
Perhaps in my Study I have fallen so deeply beneath the Spell of the Age, that I have tended to underrate its unimportance. I fancy it was a Sketch of a Lady with a Mask on, playing the piano in a Cornfield, in a low dress, with two lighted Candles, and signed "_Aubrey Weirdsley_," that first impelled me to research.