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"We mustn't let all this spoil Mr. Blair's supper. Have another glass of wine. The policeman will attend to the gas-man. We don't often get a chance to talk to a genuine antiquarian. I think, Mr. Blair, that you will be greatly interested in the architectural restoration of our parish church. It exemplifies the worst excesses of the mid-Victorian period.
Here and there and it is a little like meeting a ghost in a crowded street through all the beauty and freshness of the new city project the bones of the old: the lofty ruins, ivy-hung, of a huge Nob Hill Palace here; the mere foundation, bush-encircled, of a big old family mansion there; elaborate rusty fences of Mid-Victorian iron which enclose nothing; wide low steps of Mid-Victorian marble which lead nowhere.
He had no stuff of his own, beyond the clothes in his trunks, not even a book or a photograph; and during his wandering days the lack of such things had never struck him; but now he found himself registering a mental vow to buy some pictures as soon as possible, if only to have an excuse for banishing the German reproductions of mid-Victorian art which disfigured the walls of his sitting-room.
The love-stories of these two tales are what it is the fashion exceedingly complimentary to the age referred to if not to the age of the fashion itself to call "mid-Victorian" in their complete "propriety." Indeed, it is a Puritan lie, though it seems to possess the vivaciousness of its class, that the romances are distinguished by "bold bawdry."
Her smooth, healthy, cream-colored skin was rosy with winter, and looked as though in summer it would tan evenly, without freckles. Her chin was soft, but without a dimple, and her jaws had a clean, boyish leanness. Her smooth neck and delicious shoulders were curved, not fatly, but with youth and happiness. They were square, capable shoulders, with no mid-Victorian droop about them.
Each man undertook to outdo the other in politeness; each man forced himself to be considerate, and strove at whatever expense to himself to lighten the other's burdens; all of their relations were characterized by an elaborate, an almost mid-Victorian courtesy.
Since the appearance of these words many people who take an increasing interest in the most mysterious and romantic figure in the artistic world of the mid-Victorian period, have urged the author to tell them whether the portrait of Rossetti in Aylwin is a true one, or whether it is not idealized as certain cynical critics have affirmed.
The Tennyson in his twenties, who wrote the fairylike Lady of Shalott, was a very different man in mood and outlook from the Mid-Victorian Tennyson who wrote the execrable Merlin and Vivien; but both were possessed with the Arthurian legend. At thirty and at fifty you may easily take different views of the same men and incidents.
It is not a romance of the Mid-Victorian period, or a romance that carries with it the breath of mystery. It is a strangely companionable and levelheaded romance which pervades the ballroom and makes everyone, young and old, man and woman, want to get out on the floor and dance to the tune of the pretty melodies.
Lady Montgomery dropped her lorgnette with a little clatter and, adjusting her heavy diamond bracelets, turned her sleek mid-Victorian head to her neighbour. Gregory did not know whether to be amused or vexed. It was now his part to carry on a conversation with the great woman: and he found the task difficult. She was not silent, nor unresponsive.
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