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Table Talk
The Brompton Oratory
The only place in london where one can forget that it is Sunday.
Weber
Weber’s pianoforte pieces remind me of the beautiful glass
chandeliers at the Brighton Pavilion.
George Sand, etc.
After all the Muses are women, and you must be a man to possess
them—properly.
Mendelssohn
Mendelssohn has no gift for construction. He has only a feeling
for continuity.
Shakespeare
When an Englishman has professed his belief in the supremacy of
Shakespeare
amongst all poets, he feels himself excused from the general study
of literature.
He also feels himself excused from the particular study of Shakespeare.
Rossini’s “Stabat Mater”
The dolorous Mother should be sung by a virgin of Morales, one of
the Spanish painter’s unhealthy and hardly deiparous creatures,
with high, egg-shaped, creamy forehead and well-crimped silken hair.
Alexander Pope
Pope has more virulence and less vehemence than any of the great
satirists. His character of Sporus is the perfection of satirical
writing. The very sound of words scarify before the sense strikes.
Impressionists
How few of our young English impressionists knew the difference
between a palette and a picture! However, I believe that Walter
Sickert did—sly dog!
Turner
Turner is only a rhetorician in paint. That is why Ruskin likes
him.
English Literature
What a stay-at-home literature is the English! It would be easy
to name fifty lesser French writers whose names and works are familiar
all over the world. It would be difficult to name four of our greatest
whose writings are read to any extent outside England.
His affectation
I’m so affected, that even my lungs are affected.
Taking a chill
I caught cold—by going out without the tassel on my
walking stick.
Christianity
Nero set Christians on fire, like large tallow candles—the
only light Christians have ever been known to give.
¶ The first ten aphorisms were collected under
the title “Table Talk” and printed in John Lane’s
edition of the expurgated text of Under the Hill, 1904. The latter
three mots are traditionally ascribed to Beardsley, and have been
printed in a number of variant versions.
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