AN ESTHETIC REUNION.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XVI, Issue 123, 25 May 1881, Page 3

AN ESTHETIC REUNION.

Under this title an article in Truth *"" describes a recent visit paid to a gathering of typical representatives of the esthetic craze of the day. The room, the writer says, was very large, with a high dado in brick-red, picked out with pale pink. The rest was all peacock blue. Both colors — blue and red — threw out the angular contours of the women and the sallow wanness of their faces into vivid and most displeasing relief. I never beheld before, nnd never hope again to behold, such tortured befrowzloment of poverty-stricken heads of hair, such skilled exaggeration of unpleasant angles, such uplifting of chins and drooping of heads and eyes. The women appeared to have assiduously cultivated a pitiful leannessof outline and cadaverousness of tint. With one exception they might have been taken for galvanised corpses. One of the testhetical gentlemen present began by telling his " sisters and brothers" not to feel discouraged by the fresh evidence that had been shoAvn of the non-comprehension of the world. " How can we expect," he said; " that a gross and material world can sympathise with us ? The worshippers of culture (he called it cult-chah) will always be few and select. Wo cannot expect the many to perceive, as we do, the divine beauty of sadness, as of flowers that bloom by night alone ; the utterly precious loveliness of decay and death, and the fair divinity of disease and suffering. These are the subtly delectable things for which we live. We find a deep delight in sepulchral gloom, and a joy in sadness that the grosser beings around us could never measure, much less participate. And why ? Because they arc the Peter Bells of the hour. A primrose to their world-blinded eyes is a yellow flower with five petals and some green leaves. It is nothing more. And what is it. to us— oh ! what is it to us ? Is it not a pale and shadowy symbol of what Art, our great goddess might make it ? of what cult-chah, with her divinely precious powers, could do with it, were but the realms of nature placed under their control ? It is all this to us, and more — oh ! how much more ? It is food for the mind, and through the mind, for the body. What man or woman of the outer world would give up dining for a single day, as we do with a too utter gladness, in order to feast the eyes of the soul upon the pale purity of lillies and the divine color and beauty of a peacock's feather ? Which of the girls who nightly fill those miserable stalls at this most despicably wretched theatre would care to lunch upon a rose. Or, having tried to lunch upon a rose, which of them would feel soul-satisfied with the fare ? Not one, I venture (ven-chaw) to say — not one. How different it is with us ! How glorious and intense is our appreciation of the great Might-have-beens of Nature, and how thankful we may he that we can read upon the loaf of the lily, or the petals of the rose the great secret and consummate Might-Be of Art — read it so plainly and interpret it with such ease that for us it IS — it exists ! " He took up the sunflower as he nearcd his peroration, and, as he concluded, looked sadly and earnestly at it, the burnt umber lending invaluable aid to the cavernous depth of bis " flower-like " eyes. Many wept. ./Esthetes weep freely. They cultivate tears, which seems inconsistent, for these signs of emotion are purely natural. Even the men weep at times. Mrs R . rose, and approached the orator where he lay crumpled in a chair, his hand shading his eyes, exhausted by his effort. "Oh ! " she said, " what fair and precious thoughts you have given us ! How you have helped us to live on beautifully ! What sweet soul-sustenance you have poured forth!" and she gently raised his limp hand, aud placed within it a lovely spray of Lenten lilies that she had held throughout the evening. More orators followed in the same strain of sentimental and ridiculous gush. The audience murmured words of approval, arranged themselves in distorted attitudes of rapt attention, with a due regard to the sweep of their draperies. One girl of mature years dragged herself inch by inch along a couch, so as to leave the serpentine train of her flowered gown spread well over some yards of it. This feat was cleverly performed. As for me, I had had enough of the ungainly antics of the clique. I had been well amused, certainly, but it is uncomfortable to be amused alone. I had no one to share the fun with, and the men were too insufferable. Their airs of self-conscious-ness became irritating after a time, and there was little relief in the attenuated forms of the women, their arms at various angles, their heads on one side, their shpulders narrow, and their waists broad. I glanced, at the pretty dnugh- • ter of the artist in plates. She was fast asleep, her blonde head nestled in a corner of a peacock -blue couch. She made an adorable picture, but somebody intervened and hid it from me. Somebody always does intervene, by the way. The intervention decided me. I figuratively folded my tent like the Arabs, and silently slipped away, in the midst of another " soul-message," in course of delivery by the man who had sung the song. I . had had enough, and to use one of the clique's own adverbs, the whole thing appeared to me to bp "distinctly drivel." lam not only an unbeliever still, but am further from con1, version than ever.