Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Keren Vergon, Charles M. Bidwell, and
the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
by
Angels and Ministers AND Possession WERE FIRST
Introduction
The Victorian era has ceased to be a thing of yesterday; it has becomehistory; and the fixed look of age, no longer contemporary in character,which now grades the period, grades also the once living material whichwent to its making.
With this period of history those who were once participants in its lifecan deal more intimately and with more verisimilitude than can those whoseliterary outlook comes later. We can write of it as no sequent generationwill find possible; for we are bone of its bone and flesh of its flesh;and when we go, something goes with us which will require for itsreconstruction, not the natural piety of a returned native, such as Iclaim to be, but the cold, calculating art of literary excursionists whosedomicile is elsewhere.
Some while ago, before Mr. Strachey had made the name of Victoria toresound as triumphantly as it does now, a friend asked why I shouldtrouble to resuscitate these Victorian remains. My answer is because Imyself am Victorian, and because the Victorianism to which I belong is nowpassing so rapidly into history, henceforth to present to the world acolder aspect than that which endears it to my own mind.
The bloom upon the grape only fully appears when it is ripe for death.Then, at a touch, it passes, delicate and evanescent as the frailestblossoms of spring. Just at this moment the Victorian age has that bloomupon it—autumnal, not spring-like—which, in the nature of things, cannotlast. That bloom I have tried to illumine before time wipes it away.
Under this rose-shaded lamp of history, domestically designed, I wouldhave these old characters look young again, or not at least as though theybelonged to another age. This wick which I have kindled is short, and willnot last; but, so long as it does, it throws on them the commentary of acontemporary light. In another generation the bloom which it seeks toirradiate will be gone; nor will anyone then be able to present them to usas they really were.
Contents
I. THE QUEEN: GOD BLESS HER!
(A Scene from Home-Life in the Highlands)
II. HIS FAVOURITE FLOWER
(A Political Myth Explained)
III. THE COMFORTER
(A Political Finale)
IV. POSSESSION
(A Peep-Show in Paradise)
V. THE KING-MAKER
(Brighton—October, 1891)
VI. THE MAN OF BUSINESS
(Highbury—August, 1913)
VII. THE INSTRUMENT
(Washington—March, 1921)
The Queen: God Bless Her!
Dramatis Personae
The Queen: God Bless Her!
A Scene from Home-Life in the Highlands
The august Lady is sitting in a gar BU KİTABI OKUMAK İÇİN ÜYE OLUN VEYA GİRİŞ YAPIN!
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