LONDON'S AESTHETIC YOUNG MAN.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XVI, Issue 205, 29 August 1881, Page 1

LONDON'S AESTHETIC YOUNG MAN.

Very few know \ that the {esthetic! young man embodied- in Gilbert and 1 , iSullivan'B " Patience " w^s taken from real life. He'is an Irishman, poor, and ; forced his way into notice by sheer eccentricity. Se let his hair grov, wore strange garments, fell into attitudes, talked in ; a " bigbflown "' faahioD, and carried lilies in his baudr. He worshipped Mrs Langtry, who used ; to be present at hia dimly -lit afternoon teasj, where the light was subdued and rose colored, and the people stumbled about like pre-Raphaelite ghosts ; he fell at the feet of Sara Bernhardt ; and finally he " flopped " before Modjeska, where he still remains prostrate. He was followed by atreet Arabs, bufc scarcely to his discomposure. "I am glad, " he calmly remarked, " to afford amusement to the lower classes." His sajiogs were quoted, and finally Dv Maurier took him up, hair, attitudes, and all, and immortalised " Maudle " in fche pages of 'Punch.' The more people laughed at him the more he grew in request » Kew eccentricities of costume, such as top-coats befrogged and trimmed wifchfur, were devised and worn by the class of the aß3thetic and the world; of " Maudles." Finally Beerbohm Tree reproduced him in '• Where's the Cat ?" and everybody who went to, the Criterion exclaimed, " Oscar Wilde! " And now he shines with a reflected lustre through i /The Colonel's and Patience," and ' people say what a particularly great : young man this great young man must ba who is caricatured in the pages | of 'Punch/ and upon the boards of no ! less than three London theatres. " Father, what does a printer live on ? " — " Why child " ?— " Because you said you had not paid him for two years, and you . still take the paper." " Wife, put that child to bed he's an everlasting talker," No If sb than 4.4,000 persons died ia ; Eagland of pmall-pos during the three j years of 1870-72. A writer to tie j Modern Review recently quoted these I figures as a proof that vaccination was j an inefficient preventative, bufc he was I replied to by a reviewer ia the Specta- ■ tor ea follows :—^'He (of the Modern \ Review) is clearly ignorant of tie fact that a hundred years ago the snaallfpox mortality of London alone (with its then population of under a million) waa ■ often greater in a six months* epidemic tban that of the 20,000,000 of Eoglacd and Wales. is how in any whole year ; (hat the. average number of deaths by : small-pox was estimated at 8 per cent, of tbe to'.al morlaiiy of /the country; ; tbat of tbe then enormous mortality of children under 10 years of age the mortality by smallpox constituted onebait; that whiist it is now the; exception to hear of a case of smal'-pbs ia the persons or families of cue's friecdp, or even wider acquaintances; it was then exceptional for any one, in whatever rack of like, to attain middle age without having been tho sulject of its attack.; that 'seaming ' and ' pitting ' of the face were then so common that it was estimated that one out ol every three -persons . 'net io ibe street showed, traces of it; that fora ' « rcfet signal beauty ' to have her face disfigured by email pox was an incident often introduced into the \ novels and tales of 'the period' ; and that Ipsa by tight by, that disease was then so frtquent that at least one third of the incQates of blind asylums, within '• my own time, owed their privation 'tp it." There are very few of the, great improvements made in tiie lot of mackind which are Bble to quote bo : vnst end clear a boJy of evidence in their favour aastanda to the credit of sac? eiqatioo. '