I believe that there is no particular connection between Berkeley Square and the Aesthetes. Berkeley Square is Mayfair – the Aesthestes tended to be Kensington.  It would be interesting to take a look at the 1881 census, to see who was living in Berkeley Square at that date – my guess is that they were mostly members of the Upper however-many-it-is (Winston Churchill’s parents lived there in the late 1870s – the Marquess of Lansdowne’s house still stands, occupying a substantial chunk of the south-west corner: it was then still lived in by the family).

In the G & S operetta Iolanthe, in an aria whose first line is “Spurn not the nobly-born”, Lord Tolloller (or Lord Mountararat) sings of “Hearts just as pure and fair, may beat in Berkeley Square as in the lowly air of Seven Dials”, the implication being that Gilbert, at any rate, associated Berkeley Square with “the nobly-born”.  On the other hand, in Patience, which is, in its entirety, a skit on the Aesthetes and the Aesthetic Movement, speaks of “a greenery-yallery, Grosvenor Gallery, foot-in-the-grave young man”.  The artist Whistler had a coterie of aesthetes living near him in Chelsea.

 The only thing which suggests to me that Tomlinson might have been an aesthete, or had aesthetic leanings, is that the “spirit came and gripped him by the hair”, suggesting that he had long hair, a fashion which Oscar Wilde helped to establish, and which tended to be the mark of the more precious of the young men lampooned by Du Maurier in the pages of Punch.

 None of this means that there weren’t aesthetes in Berkeley Square: but I have never heard that it was particularly associated with the movement – which was, after all, comparatively short-lived: the inside of ten years, I would suggest.

    Alastair Wilson
    Kipling Society

Members may be interested in this question, as part of a thread in the VICTORIA listserve. If you wish to follow up replies, you could join VICTORIA, or I could pass on anything which might interest you.

Best regards,

John

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Neil Hultgren <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, Apr 1, 2011 at 4:32 AM
Subject: Berkeley Square in Kipling's "Tomlinson"
To: [log in to unmask]


Dear VICTORIA,

For a number of weeks, I have been puzzling over Rudyard Kipling's 1892 poem "Tomlinson," a satirical portrait of a late Victorian man who, upon his death, is turned out of both heaven and hell for having done nothing of his own in life. Living vicariously through others via reading, he has done no deed good enough to get him into heaven nor one bad enough to get him into hell.

A number of critics understand this poem as a critique of the Aesthetic Movement and some have cited Tomlinson's place of residence in Berkeley Square as partial evidence for this point. The Kipling Society website makes a very helpful point that Berkeley Square was a place of luxurious living in the late nineteenth century and I've also learned that Berkeley Square contains a sculpture by Pre-Raphaelite artist Alexander Munro.

Besides these useful facts, are any scholars out there aware of specific ties between Berkeley Square and aestheticism? I'm still struggling to make the connection.

Thanks for your help!

Best,
Neil

Neil Hultgren
Assistant Professor, Department of English
California State University, Long Beach
2010-2011 Ahmanson-Getty Postdoctoral Fellow, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, "Cultures of Aestheticism" Core Program: http://www.c1718cs.ucla.edu/cultures-of-aestheticism/