I am sure he will not think it inappropriate to compare him; and I am struck by how much further Mr Firbank has got beyond the commonplace world of commonplace serious fiction than even Mr Van Vechten. With the first pages of The Flower Beneath the Foot one is closed about by a new and vivid world, and a world so complete in itself that, in all its artificiality and absurdity, one feels sure it must exist somewhere: you stand in the high-windowed rooms of the Winter Palace of Pisuerga; silk swishes and gossip tinkles; the Queen lounges in a chaise longue; a maid of honour, looking out from a window fringed with green-veined bougainvilleas, dreams of marrying Prince Yousef, as she watches the clouds slowly speeding above the town like great knots of pink roses; all about one feels the rustle of the court and the glitter of diplomatic dinners, where the very hangings seem to be alive with an exquisite insatiable sensuality which, beneath fashion and official functions, provides one of the only incitements to activity, though even it is a little phantasmal, a little fragile. I have heard Mr Firbank called trivial and in one of his phases he is, but he is certainly far more serious as an artist than he is commonly credited with being. He can create an extraordinarily strong impression—about trivial matters, if you like—with extraordinarily few words; and it is not merely a question of suggesting the improper so inobviously and so lightly that it is almost impossible to put your finger on the phrase where the indecent idea was raised; he is also able to make exquisitely selected details tell for effects of a certain aesthetic intensity—as when Laura watches the royal wedding of her lover from the spike-fringed walls of the convent.
Both these books represent the last survival of the spirit of the fin de siècle: despite their occasional dallyings with the movies and other features of the twentieth century, they belong essentially to the Yellow Book era. But it is curious to contemplate the change which has come over the decadence since the hey-day of Beardsley and Wilde. The school which began with Baudelaire and is now dissolving with Arthur Symons derived its prime vitality and force from its extreme conviction of sin. The decadents talked much about "paganism," but their point of view was anything but pagan: it was a reaction against Victorian Christianity by people who were still Victorians and Christians. The fascination with which they succeeded in investing certain pleasures and ideas was directly dependent on the extent to which they could make you be-
