The influence of Verlaine and the symbolist poets of Paris in this circle was profound. Every one had a passion for things French. Symons translated the prose poems of Baudelaire and the verses of Mallarmé, Dowson is inspired by the ‘Fêtes Gallantes,’ and so on. As Mr. Plarr writes: ‘Stray Gauls used to be imported to grace literary circles here. I remember one such--a rare instance of a rough Frenchman--to whom Dowson was devoted. When a Gaul appeared in a coterie we were either silent, like the schoolgirls in their French conversation hour, or we talked a weird un-French French like the ladies in some of Du Maurier’s drawings.’[15]
[15] Victor Plarr, _Ernest Dowson_, p. 23. 1914.
Of course it must not be supposed, however, that the nineties ever remained at all stationary in this condition or entirely under these influences. Mr. Plarr is speaking of the early nineties, the age when John Gray’s _Silverpoints_ was perhaps a fair sample of the poetry of the moment for this group; but, when at the same time it must be remembered, poets like Francis Thompson and William Watson were carrying on the staider traditions of English poetry altogether unmoved by these exotic influences from Montmartre and the studios of the south. The nineties group itself only remained for a restive moment like this before each man was to go his own way. They were indeed all souls seeking the way to perfection in art. Yeats went off to assist to found the Irish School; Richard Le Gallienne went to America; Gray became a priest. Many disappeared shortly afterwards from the lower slopes of Parnassus, not being of those dowered with the true call; and so, one after the other, all are to be accounted for. The genuine men of the nineties after the fall of Wilde seem to have migrated to Smithers’ wonderful bookshop in Bond Street, where their later works were issued in ornate editions.
The names of others besides the actual members of the Rhymers’ Club must not be altogether forgotten, such as Percy Hemingway with his _Happy Wanderer_, Theodore Wratislaw, Olive Custance, Dollie Radford, Rosamund Marriott-Watson, Norman Gale, and many others who were also of the movement. However, of them I cannot speak here, but can only refer the reader to the book-lists of Elkin Mathews and John Lane for the first period, and of Leonard Smithers for the second. In the numerous slim plaquettes of verse issued from these presses he will find golden verse worthy of the labour of his research. Indeed, amid so many writers one is compelled to resort to the odious necessity of a choice, so I shall here all too briefly deal with _Silverpoints_ as a typical volume of the early period, and then trace succinctly the career of two poets, who had certainly the right to that appellation, Ernest Dowson and John Davidson, and who were both not only of, but actually were the movement itself. Lastly, in this section, as an indication of the wide influence these writers had overseas, as in the case of the Birch Bark School of Canada and certain poets in Australia, I wish to mention the young American poet who was an intimate of so many of the men of the nineties--William Theodore Peters.