Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-08-30
A NEW OSCAR WILDE.
The Sar JOsephin Peladau, Who Has
Caught the Partisan Eye.
POSES In RUFFLES AND VELVETS,
And Indulges in Twenty-Five Different Per-
fumes All at Once.
SCHOOL OF POETAsTERS
CORRESPONDENCE OF THE prspA1

| CORRESPONDENCE OF THE DrsPATcH.l
PARIS, Aug. 21.--Paris owns strange
creature calling itself Josephin Peladau
Begging its pardon, calling itself the Sal
Josephin Peladau. Peladau holds to the
Sar, especially. It is a fantastic title in
sound, but Josephin claims right to 1t a
being descended from Eastern kings.
You see from here how picturesque is the
image of Oriental ancestry evoked3 Every
body in Paris has heard of the Sas Josephine
Peladau. Every one in Paris connected,
in near or remote fashion, with that life Of
Bohemia that recruits its ranks from les
jeunes in literature and art has seen him.
What Oscar Wilde was to London and New
York ten years ago, he to-day is to Paris.
A portrait of him in one of the spring exhi-
bitions drew a curious and laughing crowd.
Imagine small being in q velvet blouse
belted to the waist, with cuffs of old lace
turned up from wrists and hands nervous
and womanish. A face and head-with a
black pair of eyes-eaten up and engulfed
In a pent-house-roof of tangled black hair,
curling in bush to the eyebrows, and met
by sable beard, vaguely and Vandykely
pointed.
REvELs.N EsoTERIC LORE
The eyes, to an admirer of the sasrare
supposed to look by the straightest path
into all manner of transcendentalities. To
him Josephin Is streaked with . some
thing of Madame Blavatsky. Eastern in
sight into adept esoteric lore of some
shadowy sort or kind Is thought to be his.
BY word of the few courageous individuals
who venture to stand up for him, the Sas is
a deeply original thinker and talker as
well, one whom the common herd of men
may despise, but who holds himself serenely
far beyond the reach of sordid ridicule and
vulgar contumely--a gorgeous oriental
feathered hat, spinning magnifcently in
in space above the head of the crude modern
man, who gets his clothes from London and
whose soul is dead to the subtle fascinations
of the poetry of the decadsnts.
Not exactly that Josephin Peladau is Q
deeadent poet himself That is, he is no
poet of any sort, if by the term one conceive
the doer Of anything whatever, even of any,
thing so unsubstantial as rhyme. The popu-
lace is given to understand that he has
achieved somewhat or other. But if curl
GUS seeker should try to put his finger on
the achievement it seems to result in moth
ing much more than that the bushy headed
Sas has succeeded in using as many as
twenty-five different sorts Of perfumes
about his person at one and the same time.
don't contest that this may not be claim
to celebrity of kind.
A STRIKING RESEMBLANCE
But Josephin Peladau has affiliations
nevertheless with the new and ineffable
school of symbolism and decadents, of which
no ordinarily-constituted mind pretends to
understand anything. It is quite possible
that these progressive poets would scout
the connection. In fact they do. A derisive
cry goes up when the velvet breeches and
the birdiest head with silver fllet through
1t, saunters upon the scene of Decadent
symposium. 1.-THE Phenomenon" his COM
panfons and acquaintances In circles of the
latest French literature designate him to
his face.
But whether they approve of him or not,
whether or no these interesting young mem
give the stamp of their endorsement to the
Vandyke velvets, and the lace ruf1es, and
the % different sorts of perfumes, used at
one and the same time, there is family
similarity which you can't prevent the
common mind from detecting. I won't af-
firm that it goes any farther than the silken
and scented underclothing, which many Of
these fin du steele poets are said to affect,
finding in this elegance and softness OF the
dessous Gas the French have it ip that in
imitable vernacular of theirs). A stimulus,
tiveness of impression, hitherto held to be
proper to the weaker sex only. One can't
doubt that the picturesque Josephin is
clad in purple and fine linen as well within
as without.
WHAT THE SCHOOL PRODUCES.
Impossible to feel the texture of the same
fibre in the monstrous growth of emascu-
lated egoism that is Peladau's, and that of
some of these minor French poetasters. Of
many of them, also, one hears much, with
out ever being able to discover that they
have written anything whatever. What
you do read is in inverse ratio to the per-
fumed underwear. Its chief characteristic
is that it does not smell sweet The material
ism of Zola may be rank, but there is some
thing in the suggestiveness of the school
that seeks to supplant it in spite Of much
swimming in the blue is ranker still.
1t is sight, not for gods, but for the best
fui, end of-tRe>century' iitterateurs Of this
particular school, with white, soaked face,
neither masculine nor feminine, and a shock
of Samsonian hair, all rather than Sam
out on curly end, from under the hand-wide
brim of q chimney. pot hat. Marvellous
these hatsi have only seen them equaled
in the green-bannered professions of the
good Saint Patrick on the 18th day of March
iu New York. The Partisan poet, wearer of
the Paddy hat is usually accom- panied bv
some striking looking woman who has the
of appearance while he has the |
effeminacy.
And yet some of these cigarette-smoktng
women do wonderful things with their pen. |
And some of the most stirring and adorable |
lines you get to read have emanated from |
brains that, II not exactly belonging to the |
shock of hair and the scented underlinen, |
Are first cousins to both. One has but to |
mention Verlaine, who has naught to do |
with beruffled undergarments and two
1ozen assorted scents, to be sure, being |
usually recumbent on q cot in a hospital as |
,he result of a long-protracted spree! Tho |
exquisite verses he writes have to be rescued |
from under the hospital cot mattrass. He is |
Vt the opposite pole from Peladau, the later
Oscar Wilde who poses much and writes
,othing. But betwixt the two there runs, |
Up and down, gamut of personalities, some
.epulsively ludicrous enough, some with |
Ienius enough. to repay the pen Of Balzac.
A. G.
GRABBING ON THE HUDSON,