The Eighteen Nineties by Holbrook Jackson — Read

"Thrice I have patted my God on the head that men might call me brave. " -- _Tomlinson_, by RUDYARD KIPLING.

Closely related to the new dandyism and the search for reality by means of mood and sensation in their more sophisticated forms came the gentle art of astonishing the middle class. The one was in the nature of a by-product of the other. Young bloods of the period delighted to _épater le bourgeois_, as the phrase went, and with experience a new kind of art came into vogue: the art of shocking. In a sense the necessity was thrust upon the younger generation by the unimaginative opposition their demand for more life encountered at the hands of the autocracy of elderly respectability. It was really a contest between the stupidity of vitality and the vitality of stupidity. For if those in authority had occasional doubts as to their own material importance they had none about their virtue and righteousness. No one, indeed, had ever contested their right to such views, and these views were supported by the full weight of traditional opinion. It was hardly surprising that they should look with suspicion upon the restiveness of the younger generation, because that unrest was not the conventional sowing of wild oats: a custom conventionally recognised from earliest times as the natural safety valve of turbulent youth. It was a far more subtle thing. To let off steam and settle down into the steady and respectable run of life is one thing, and comprehensible to elderly folk who have been through the process, but to let off steam and refuse to settle down seemed serious folly, especially when arguments were advanced in defence of what, in the elderly point of view, was nothing less than outrageous conduct. The bewildered elders of the Nineties were faced with that dilemma.