Yellow Nineties 2.0 The Old Women <editor>Lorraine Janzen Kooistra</editor> </titleStmt> <editionStmt> <edition> <date>2019</date> </edition> </editionStmt> <publicationStmt> <idno>SAVOYV5_19po</idno> <publisher>Yellow Nineties 2.0</publisher> <pubPlace>Ryerson University Centre for Digital Humanities</pubPlace> <address> <addrLine>English Department</addrLine> <addrLine>350 Victoria Street,</addrLine> <addrLine>Toronto ON,</addrLine> <addrLine>M5B 2K3</addrLine> <addrLine>Canada</addrLine> </address> <availability> <p>Usable according to the Creative Commons License <ref target="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/">Attribution Non-commercial Share-alike</ref>.</p> </availability> </publicationStmt> <sourceDesc> <biblStruct> <monogr> <editor>Symons, Arthur</editor> <author>Symons, Arthur</author> <title level="j">The Savoy Leonard Smithers London September 1896 Symons, Arthur. "The Old Women." The Savoy vol. 5, July 1896, p. 55. Savoy Digital Edition, edited by Christopher Keep and Lorraine Janzen Kooistra, 2018-2020. Yellow Nineties 2.0, Ryerson University Centre for Digital Humanities, 2019. https://1890s.ca/savoyv5-symons-women/

Our editorial method is informed by social-text editing principles. By “text” we mean verbal and visual printed material, including non-referential physical elements such as bindings, page layouts, and ornaments. We view any text as the outcome of collaborative processes that have specific manifestations at precise historical moments. The Yellow Nineties Online publishes facsimile editions of a select collection of fin-de- siècle aesthetic periodicals, together with paratexts of production and reception such as cover designs, advertising materials, and reviews. This historical material is enhanced by two kinds of peer-reviewed scholarly commentary: biographies of the periodicals’ contributors and associates; and critical introductions to each title and volume by experts in the field. All scholarly material on the site is vetted by the editor(s) and peer- reviewed by them and/or an international board of advisors. The site as a whole is peer- reviewed by NINES (Networked Infrastructure for Nineteenth-Century Electronic Scholarship). Contributors to the site retain personal copyright in their material. The site is licensed with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 license. Both primary and secondary materials, including all visual images, are marked up in TEI- (Textual-Encoding Initiative) compliant XML (Extensible Markup Language). To ensure maximum flexibility for users, magazines are available on the site as virtual objects (facsimiles) in FlipBook form; in HTML for online reading; in PDF for downloading and collecting; and in XML for those who wish to review and/or adapt our tag sets. In order to make ornamental devices, such as initial letters, head- and tail- pieces, searchable, we have developed a Database of Ornament in OMEKA, and linked it to the relevant pages of each magazine edition. As a dynamic structure, a scholarly website is always in process; Phase One of The Yellow Nineties Online (2010-2015) is completed and Phase Two (2016-2021) is underway.

 1896 English English literature -- 19th century -- Periodicals Great Britain -- Periodicals Poetry Possible Genres (multiple): "Fiction," "Nonfiction," "Poetry," "Paratext" (TOC, prospecti, advertisements, frontmatter, titlepage), "Review" (older reviews), "Criticism" (including critical introductions), "Visual Art" (images, bio images), Historiography (bios),"Bibliography" (intros, crit, bios, anything with a bibliography attached), "Drama," "Ephemera," "Translation," "Religion," "Travel Writing," "Music, Other,") Periodical Possible Types (singular): "Periodical" (texts/most stuff), "Interactive Resource" (current writing, biographies, not old reviews), "Still Image" (images, visual art), "Physical Object" (posters, prospecti) Book History Literature Possible Disciplines (multiple): "Book History (include for all periodical items)," "Literature," "Art History (use for art, also use for reviews)," "History (don't use in a general sense)," "Theatre Studies," "Musicology," "Philosophy," "Anthropology," "Science" <emph rend="bold"><emph rend="indent3">       THE OLD WOMEN</emph></emph>
   THEY pass upon their old, tremulous feet,    Creeping with little satchels down the street,    And they remember, many years ago,    Passing that way in silks. They wander, slow    And solitary, through the city ways,    And they alone remember those old days Men have forgotten. In their shaking heads A dancer of old carnivals yet treads The measure of past waltzes, and they see The candles lit again, the patchouli Sweeten the air, and the warm cloud of musk Enchant the passing of the passionate dusk. Then you will see a light begin to creep Under the earthen eyelids, dimmed with sleep, And a new tremor, happy and uncouth, Jerking about the corners of the mouth. Then the old head drops down again, and shakes, Muttering.       Sometimes, when the swift gaslight wakes The dreams and fever of the sleepless town, A shaking huddled thing in a black gown Will steal at midnight, carrying with her Violet little bags of lavender, Into the tap-room full of noisy light ; Or, at the crowded earlier hour of night, Sidle, with matches, up to some who stand About a stage-door, and, with furtive hand, Appealing : " I too was a dancer, when Your fathers would have been young gentlemen ! " And sometimes, out of some lean ancient throat, A broken voice, with here and there a note 56THE SAVOY Of unspoilt crystal, suddenly will arise Into the night, while a cracked fiddle cries Pantingly after ; and you know she sings The passing of light, famous, passing things. And sometimes, in the hours past midnight, reels Out of an alley upon staggering heels, Or into the dark keeping of the stones About a doorway, a vague thing of bones And draggled hair.       And all these have been loved, And not one ruinous body has not moved The heart of man's desire, nor has not seemed Immortal in the eyes of one who dreamed The dream that men call love. This is the end Of much fair flesh ; it is for this you tend Your delicate bodies many careful years, To be this thing of laughter and of tears, To be this living judgment of the dead, An old grey woman with a shaking head.

            ARTHUR SYMONS.