LONDON'S ÆTHETIC YOUNG MAN.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3168, 24 August 1881, Page 4

LONDON'S ÆTHETIC YOUNG MAN.

Very few know that the ajsthetic young man embodied in Gilbert and Sullivan's " Patience " was taken from real life. He is an Irishman, poor, and forced his way into notice by sheer eccentricity. He let his hair grow, wore strange garments, fell Into attitudes, talked in a ' high-flown' fashion, and carried lillies in his hands. He worshipped Mrs 1 angtry, who used to be present at his dimly-lit afternoon teas, where the light was subdued and rosecolored, and the people stumbled about like pre-Baphaelite ghosts ; he fell at the feel of Sara Bernhardt; and finally he ' flopped' before Wodjeska, where he still remains prostrate. He was followed by street arabs, but scarcely to his discomposure. ' T am glad,' he calmly remarked, 'to afford amusement to the lower classes.' His sayings were quoted, and finally Dv Maurier took him up, hair, attitudes, and all, and immortalised ' Mandle,' in the pages of Punch. The more people laughed at him the more he grew in request. New eccentricities of costume, such as top-coats befrogged and trimmed with fur, were devised and worn by the glass of the aesthetic and th? world of ' Maudles.' Finally Beerbohm reproduced him in ' Where's the Tat ?' and everybody who went to the Criterion exclaimed, ' Oscar Wilde!' And now he shines with a reflected lustre through 'Tin Colonel's nn' ' ntienee,' and people sm what, a particularly great young man t. hi - great young man must be who is caricatured in the pages of Punch and upon tl.e boards of no Icbs than three London theatres.