The Dedalus Book of Decadence: (Moral Ruins) (18 page)

THEORETIKOS

by Oscar Wilde

This mighty empire hath but feet of clay:

  Of all its ancient chivalry and might

  Our little island is forsaken quite:

Some enemy hath stolen its crown of bay,

And from its hills that voice hath passed away

  Which spake of Freedom: 0 come out of it,

  Come out of it, my Soul, thou art not fit

For this vile traffic-house, where day by day

  Wisdom and reverence are sold at mart,

  And the rude people rage with ignorant cries

Against an heritage of centuries.

  It mars my calm: wherefore in dreams of Art

  And loftiest culture I would stand apart,

Neither for God, nor for his enemies.

**********

THE COURT OF VENUS

by Aubrey Beardsley

(From
Under the Hill
)

I

Before a toilet that shone like the altar of Nôtre Dame des Victoires, Venus was seated in a little dressing-gown of black and heliotrope.
The coiffeur Cosmé was caring for her scented chevelure, and with tiny silver tongs, warm from the caresses of the flame, made delicious intelligent curls that fell as lightly as a breath about her forehead and over her eyebrows, and clustered like tendrils about her neck.
Her three favourite girls, Pappelarde, Blanchemains, and Loreyne, waited immediately upon her with perfume and powder in delicate flaçons and frail cassolettes, and held in porcelain jars the ravishing paints prepared by Chateline for those cheeks and lips that had grown a little pale with anguish of exile.
Her three favourite boys, Claude, Clair, and Sarrasine, stood amorously about with salver, fan and napkin.
Millamant held a slight tray of slippers, Minette some tender gloves, La Popelinière, mistress of the robes, was ready with a frock of yellow and yellow.
La Zambinella bore the jewels, Florizel some flowers, Amadour a box of various pins, and Vadius a box of sweets.
Her doves, ever in attendance, walked about the room that was panelled with the gallant paintings of Jean Baptiste Dorat, and some dwarfs and doubtful creatures sat here and there, lolling out their tongues, pinching each other, and behaving oddly enough.
Sometimes Venus gave them little smiles.

As the toilet was in progress, Priapusa, the fat manicure and fardeuse, strode in and seated herself by the side of the dressing-table, greeting Venus with an intimate nod.
She wore a gown of white watered silk with gold lace trimmings, and a velvet necklet of false vermilion.
Her hair hung in bandeaux over her ears, passing into a huge chignon at the back of her head, and the hat, wide-brimmed and hung with a vallance of pink muslin, was floral with red roses.

Priapusa’s voice was full of salacious unction; she had terrible little gestures with the hands, strange movements with the shoulders, a short respiration that made surprising wrinkles in her bodice, a corrupt skin, large horny eyes, a parrot’s nose, a small loose mouth, great flaccid cheeks, and chin after chin.
She was a wise person, and Venus loved her more than any of her other servants, and had a hundred pet names for her, such as, Dear Toad, Pretty Pol, Cock-robin, Dearest Lip, Touchstone, Little Cough-drop, Bijou, Buttons, Dear Heart, Dick-dock, Mrs Manly, Little Nipper, Cochon-de-lait, Naughty-naughty, Blessèd Thing, and Trump.

The talk that passed between Priapusa and her mistress was of that excellent kind that passes between old friends, a perfect understanding giving to scraps of phrases their full meaning, and to the merest reference, a point.
Naturally Tannhauser, the new comer, was discussed a little.
Venus had not seen him yet, and asked a score of questions on his account that were delightfully to the point.

Priapusa told the story of his sudden arrival, his curious wandering in the gardens, and calm satisfaction with all he saw there, his impromptu affection for a slender girl upon the first terrace, of the crowd of frocks that gathered round and pelted him with roses, of the graceful way he defended himself with his mask, and of
the queer reverence he made to the statue of the God of all gardens, kissing that deity with a pilgrim’s devotion.
Just now Tannhauser was at the baths, and was creating a most favourable impression.

The report and the coiffing were completed at the same moment.

“Cosmé,” said Venus, “you have been quite sweet and quite brilliant, you have surpassed yourself to-night.”

“Madam flatters me,” replied the antique old thing, with a girlish giggle under his black satin mask.
“Gad, Madam; sometimes I believe I have no talent in the world, but to-night I must confess to a touch of the vain mood.”

It would pain me horribly to tell you about the painting of her face; suffice it that the sorrowful work was accomplished frankly, magnificently, and without a shadow of deception.

Venus slipped away the dressing-gown, and rose before the mirror in a flutter of frilled things.
She was adorably tall and slender.
Her neck and shoulders were so wonderfully drawn, and the little malicious breasts were full of the irritation of loveliness that can never be entirely comprehended, or ever enjoyed to the utmost.
Her arms and hands were loosely but delicately articulated, and her legs were divinely long.
From the hip to the knee, twenty-two inches; from the knee to the heel, twenty-two inches, as befitted a Goddess.

I should like to speak more particularly about her, for generalities are not of the slightest service in a description.
But I am afraid that an enforced silence here and there would leave such numerous gaps in the picture that it had better not be begun at all than left unfinished.

Those who have only seen Venus in the Vatican, in the Louvre, in the Uffizi, or in the British Museum, can
have no idea of how very beautiful and sweet she looked.
Not at all like the lady in “Lempriere.”

Priapusa grew quite lyric over the dear little person, and pecked at her arms with kisses.

“Dear Tongue, you must really behave yourself,” said Venus, and called Millamant to bringher the slippers.

The tray was freighted with the most exquisite and shapely pantoufles, sufficient to make Cluny a place of naught.
There were shoes of grey and black and brown suède, of white silk and rose satin, and velvet and sarcenet; there were some of sea-green sewn with cherry blossoms, some of red with willow branches, and some of grey with bright-winged birds.
There were heels of silver, of ivory, and of gilt; there were buckles of very precious stones set in most strange and esoteric devices; there were ribands tied and twisted into cunning forms; there were buttons so beautiful that the button-holes might have no pleasure till they closed upon them; there were soles of delicate leathers scented with maréchale, and linings of soft stuffs scented with the juice of July flowers.
But Venus, finding none of them to her mind, called for a discarded pair of blood-red maroquin, diapered with pearls.
These looked very distinguished over her white silk stockings.

As the tray was being carried away, the capricious Florizel snatched as usual a slipper from it, and fitted the foot over his penis, and made the necessary movements.
That was Florizel’s little caprice.
Meantime, La Popelinière stepped forward with the frock.

“I shan’t wear one to-night,” said Venus.
Then she slipped on her gloves.

When the toilet was at an end all her doves clustered round her feet, loving to frôler her ankles with their plumes, and the dwarfs clapped their hands, and put their fingers between their lips and whistled.
Never
before had Venus been so radiant and compelling.
Spiridion, in the corner, looked up from his game of Spellicans and trembled.
Claude and Clair, pale with pleasure, stroked and touched her with their delicate hands, and wrinkled her stockings with their nervous lips, and smoothed them with their thin fingers; and Sarrasine undid her garters and kissed them inside and put them on again, pressing her thighs with his mouth.
The dwarfs grew very daring, I can tell you.
There was almost a mêlée.
They illustrated pages 72 and 73 of Delvau’s Dictionary.

In the middle of it all, Pranzmungel announced that supper was ready upon the fifth terrace.
“Ah!”
cried Venus, “I’m famished!”

II

She was quite delighted with Tannhauser, and, of course, he sat next her at supper.

The terrace, made beautiful with a thousand vain and fantastical devices, and set with a hundred tables and four hundred couches, presented a truly splendid appearance.
In the middle was a huge bronze fountain with three basins.
From the first rose a many-breasted dragon, and four little Loves mounted upon swans, and each Love was furnished with a bow and arrow.
Two of them that faced the monster seemed to recoil in fear, two that were behind made bold enough to aim their shafts at him.
From the verge of the second sprang a circle of slim golden columns that supported silver doves, with tails and wings spread out.
The third, held by a group of grotesquely attenuated satyrs, was centred with a thin pipe hung with masks and roses, and capped with children’s heads.

From the mouths of the dragon and the Loves,
from the swans’ eyes, from the breasts of the doves, from the satyrs’ horns and lips, from the masks at many points, and from the childrens’ curls, the water played profusely, cutting strange arabesques and subtle figures.

The terrace was lit entirely by candles.
There were four thousand of them, not numbering those upon the tables.
The candlesticks were of a countless variety, and smiled with moulded cochônneries.
Some were twenty feet high, and bore single candles that flared like fragrant torches over the feast, and guttered till the wax stood round the tops in tall lances.
Some, hung with dainty petticoats of shining lustres, had a whole bevy of tapers upon them, devised in circles, in pyramids, in squares, in cuneiforms, in single lines regimentally and in crescents.

Then on quaint pedestals and Terminal Gods and gracious pilasters of every sort, were shell-like vases of excessive fruits and flowers that hung about and burst over the edges and could never be restrained.
The orange-trees and myrtles, looped with vermilion sashes, stood in frail porcelain pots, and the rose-trees were wound and twisted with superb invention over trellis and standard.
Upon one side of the terrace, a long gilded stage for the comedians was curtained off with Pagonian tapestries, and in front of it the music-stands were placed.
The tables arranged between the fountain and the flight of steps to the sixth terrace were all circular, covered with white damask, and strewn with irises, roses, kingcups, colombines, daffodils, carnations and lilies; and the couches, high with soft cushions and spread with more stuffs than could be named, had fans thrown upon them, and little amorous surprise packets.

Beyond the escalier stretched the gardens, which were designed so elaborately and with so much splendour that the architect of the Fetes d’Armailhacq could have found in them no matter for cavil, and the still lakes
strewn with profuse barges full of gay flowers and wax marionettes, the alleys of tall trees, the arcades and cascades, the pavilions, the grottoes, and the garden-gods – all took a strange tinge of revelry from the glare of the light that fell upon them from the feast.

The frockless Venus and Tannhauser, with Priapusa and Claude and Clair, and Farcy, the chief comedian, sat at the same table.
Tannhauser, who had doffed his travelling suit, wore long black silk stockings, a pair of pretty garters, a very elegant ruffled shirt, slippers and a wonderful dressing-gown.
Claude and Clair wore nothing at all, delicious privilege of immaturity, and Farcy was in ordinary evening clothes.
As for the rest of the company, it boasted some very noticeable dresses, and whole tables of quite delightful coiffures.
There were spotted veils that seemed to stain the skin with some exquisite and august disease, fans with eye-slits in them through which their bearers peeped and peered; fans painted with postures and covered with the sonnets of Sporion and the short stories of Scaramouche, and fans of big living moths stuck upon mounts of silver sticks.
There were masks of green velvet that make the face look trebly powdered; masks of the heads of birds, of apes, of serpents, of dolphins, of men and women, of little embryons and of cats; masks like the faces of gods; masks of coloured glass, and masks of thin talc and of india-rubber.
There were wigs of black and scarlet wools, of peacocks’ feathers, of gold and silver threads, of swansdown, of the tendrils of the vine, and of human hairs; huge collars of stiff muslin rising high above the head; whole dresses of ostrich feathers curling inwards; tunics of panthers’ skins that looked beautiful over pinktights; capotes of crimson satin trimmed with the wings of owls; sleeves cut into the shapes of apocryphal animals; drawers flounced down to the ankles, and
tiny, red roses; stockings with fetes galantes, and curious designs, and petticoats cut like artificial flowers.
Some of the women had put on delightful little moustaches dyed in purples and bright greens, twisted and waxed with absolute skill; and some wore great white beards after the manner of Saint Wilgeforte.
Then Dorat had painted extraordinary grotesques and vignettes over their bodies, here and there.
Upon a cheek, an old man scratching his horned head; upon a forehead, an old woman teased by an impudent amor; upon a shoulder, an amorous singerie; round a breast, a circlet of satyrs; about a wrist, a wreath of pale, unconscious babes; upon an elbow, a bouquet of spring flowers; across a back, some surprising scenes of adventure; at the corners of a mouth, tiny red spots; and upon a neck, a flight of birds, a caged parrot, a branch of fruit, a butterfly, a spider, a drunken dwarf, or, simply, some initials.
But most wonderful of all were the black silhouettes painted upon the legs, and which showed through a white silk stocking like a sumptuous bruise.