From the Pall Mall Gazette: “The Pageant.” Rev. of The Pageant, vol. 2

The second number of the Pageant, within the limits which the editors have set themselves, is a highly creditable production. These limits are perhaps enjoined more by fashion than by taste. The appreciation of beauty and style is not deeper and truer to-day than it was a century ago, when our forefathers were content with the invertebrate prettinesses and ostentatious elegances of their “Albums” and “Keepsakes.” Now, these things are taught in the schools. The faded ideals of loveliness and worth may be still relished in the kitchen, but Art (with a big A) in the drawing-room means something more esoteric and exclusive. Who would buy a gift-book, embellished with the homely pictures of, say, Morland, Cotman, and the rest, although these were the true “Old Masters” of the English school? We are all for Burne-Jones and Rossetti now, and the domestic virtues, in pictorial art, are at a discount. Mr. Gleeson White, the literary editor, is less restricted than his colleague, Mr. C. H. Shannon, and provides a comparatively varied menu. He leads off himself with an essay on Gustave Moreau, that fantastic painter of ornamental tragedies who has so foolishly been nicknamed the “French Burne-Jones.” The poetical contributions, except the excellent Johnsonian verses of Austin Dobson, are from sweet singers, whose key and whose merit may both be described as “minor.” A charming essay, finished in its literary form, and alone worth the price of the volume, is Edward Purcell’s “Of Purple Jars.” It is odd to meet in the Pageant a piece that might be profitably discussed at a mothers’ meeting! A play from Maeterlinck, a quaint tale by A. E. Abbott, essays from C. Ricketts and D. S. McColl [sic], and the inevitable contribution from Max Beerbohm are among the noteworthy items. The artistic contents, as has been indicated, are in narrower range. Mr. Shannon’s own contribution, “A Wounded Amazon,” is the least remarkable. Of Mr. Watts, Sir E. Burne-Jones, and M. Puvis de Chavannes there are several examples, and Rossetti’s “Hamlet and Ophelia”—that beautiful but entirely un-Shakespearean composition—is excellently reproduced from a pen-drawing. Mr. Rothenstein’s portrait of Mr. J. K. Huysmans is over-elaborated in the modelling and not quite certain in the proportions of head and figure. The book also contains a fascinating little first sketch by Walter Crane for an early Toy-Book, and there is a pretentious coloured woodblock by Lucian Pisarro [sic.], whose affected mediaevalism seems to have survived the recent publication of the woodcut work of his master in the art, the late Robert Louis Stevenson. It should be noted that the half-tone blocks made and printed on special presses by the Swan Engraving Company are singularly good, and that the volume altogether is a beautiful gift-book.

“The Pageant, 1897.” Edited by C. Hazlewood Shannon and J. W. Gleeson White. (London: Henry and Co.).