The Memoirs of Arthur Symons: Life and Art in the 1890’s

by Arthur Symons, Karl Beckson (Editor)

This book is the literary and private biography of the man Yeats called "the most important critic of his generation." Arthur Symons's Memoirs combine material never before published with essays reprinted from scattered sources, arranged according to a plan that Symons outlined to his literary agent but that has remained unrealized until now. Author of The Symbolist Movement in Literature and founding editor of The Savoy , Symons reveals here his critical and personal impressions of the greatest artists and writers of his time as well as the leading theatrical personalities. Revealed also are the experiences of an 1890's man-about-London, including his love affairs with music hall girls. The potentially libelous nature of Symons' amorous confessions prevented publication of a large part of his Memoirs during his lifetime. They are now published in this volume. Following an informative introduction by Professor Beckson, the Memoirs begin with "A Prelude to Life," Symons' account of his early development and the start of his literary career in the 1880's. The Memoirs end with a harrowing account of Symons's mental breakdown in Italy in 1908. The entire text is annotated by the editor. Although Symons survived until 1945, he recognized—in planning his Memoirs —that his major achievement lay in guiding the student of literature and art through the transitional period between the Victorian and the modern world.

320 pages, Paperback

First published November 23, 1990

About the author

Born in Milford Haven, Wales, of Cornish parents, Symons was educated privately, spending much of his time in France and Italy. Between 1884 and 1886 he edited four of Bernard Quaritch's Shakespeare Quarto Facsimiles, and in 1888 - 1889 seven plays of the "Henry Irving" Shakespeare. He became a member of the staff of the Athenaeum in 1891, and of the Saturday Review in 1894, but his major editorial feat was his work with the short-lived Savoy.

His first volume of verse, Days and Nights (1889), consisted of dramatic monologues. His later verse is influenced by a close study of modern French writers, of Charles Baudelaire, and especially of Paul Verlaine. He reflects French tendencies both in the subject-matter and style of his poems, in their eroticism and their vividness of description. Symons contributed poems and essays to the Yellow Book, including an important piece which was later expanded into The Symbolist Movement in Literature, which would have a major influence on William Butler Yeats and T. S. Eliot. From late 1895 through 1896 he edited, along with Aubrey Beardsley and Leonard Smithers, The Savoy, a literary magazine which published both art and literature. Noteworthy contributors included Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, and Joseph Conrad.

In 1892, The Minister's Call, Symons's first play, was produced by the Independent Theatre Society – a private club – to avoid censorship by the Lord Chamberlain's Office.

In 1902 Symons made a selection from his earlier verse, published as Poems. He translated from the Italian of Gabriele D'Annunzio The Dead City (1900) and The Child of Pleasure (1898), and from the French of Émile Verhaeren The Dawn (1898). To The Poems of Ernest Dowson (1905) he prefixed an essay on the deceased poet, who was a kind of English Verlaine and had many attractions for Symons. In 1909 Symons suffered a psychotic breakdown, and published very little new work for a period of more than twenty years. His Confessions: A Study in Pathology (1930), has a moving description of his breakdown and treatment.

Reviews

[Side Real Press · Rating 4 out of 5]

In a previous review (Deacadent London by Antony Clayton) I mentioned how Arthur Symons was a thread that ran throughout it and it occurred to me to that his memoirs could be interesting.

As the blurb for the book indicates, these have been somewhat edited/reconstructed by Karl Beckson from various typescripts held at Princeton University. In his informative introduction he explains why this had to be so; Symon's breakdown in 1908 affecting his writing abilities and his refusal to allow anyone to edit them being the two major factors. Obviously we do not know what Beckson has edited out, but reading the book it would appear that the excisions have been sensitively done as it reads very smoothly.

The book is topped and tailed by two previously pieces of autobiography, the first regarding his childhood and arrival in London (from 'Spiritual Adventures') and the other his mental breakdown (from 'Confessions: A Study in Pathology'). The rest is a series of reminiscences of various personalities, presented in a rough chronological order. Most of are famous; Pater, Verlaine, Rodin, Wilde, Beardsley, Bernhardt, Jarry, D'Annunzio; but Symon's also writes upon those who are now more footnotes to the period (Herbet Horne, Hugues Rebell Eduoard de Max) and those characters personal to him alone such as Lydia a muse who inspired many of the poems in both 'London Nights' and 'Amoris Victima'.

Symons is an acute witness and writes beautifully of those observations; "[Ernest] Dowson has exquisite sensibility, he vibrated in harmony with every delicate emotion; but he had no outlook, he had not the escape of intellect. His only escape, then, was to plunge into the crowd, to fancy then that he lost sight of himself as he disappeared into the sight of others. The more he soiled himself at that gross contact, the further would he seem to be from what beckoned to him...". Symons is equally perceptive and evocative in his chapters on Beardsley. "[He had] that absorption of a lifetime in an hour, which we find in those who hasten to have their work done before noon, Knowing that they will not see the evening" and Condor "the painter of disillusion: his imaginary figures wander from where, only in Watteau, le frisson is made woman, to that fantastic region where fancy dress is to those beings who inhabit it a necessary part of their existences".

Women are often on Symons mind, specifically in 'Music Halls and Ballet Girls' and 'Marcelle and other Parisian diversions' but also in 'East and West End Silhouettes' and asides in his portraits "we fell into conversation with an exotic girl who had a collection of venomous snakes...". These help to bring his characters to life by placing them in a cultural milieu but also remind us that this is really an autobiography. One of the most intriguing is the description of the "fantastic room" owned by Huysmans friend Berthe Courrière, an "extraordinary menagerie of bric-a-brac". Courrière was also the lover of Remy de Goumont. Symons places both men in the same chapter.

Symons himself does not come over very sympathetically. He has a very well developed sense of his own importance as a writer and his attitude towards women is quite mercenary and exploitative - something that may well rankle with the sensitive (I include myself among them), and he is something of a braggart; "I suppose I have always been vain...I was quite certain then from the intensity of her gaze on me that she [Lillie Langtry] was struck with me". Symons almost relishes his 'evilness', but even he seems to draw the line at Jean Lorrain which makes for one of the most entertaining, and brutal, chapters of the book. Symons describes him as "abnormally vicious, depraved and infamous" and his book Monsiuer de Phocas as "the most monstrous, perverse, abnormal, cruel, venomous, infamous modern novel I have ever read". Compare this to his comments on D'Annuncio's characters who are "soulless. They show their nerves in gestures, cries, caresses... We seeing his woman women living on their sensations, for their sensation's sake; catching eagerly at every instant as it passes; hating the past, fearing the future, so infinite to them is the lure of life. And they sin for the mere luxury of it, from their incapacity of avoiding it".

Such passages are extremely revealing of the author in both his 'Victorian Romantic' and 'Decadent' poses, and though I came away not liking him as a person, I liked his observations and his prose style a lot. I think anyone interested in the 'decadent' period will enjoy this book a lot.