He struck his deepest note in that
terrible story, _The Turn of the Screw_; and though there is in the
heart of that horror a truth of repentance and religion, it is again
notable of the Victorian writers that the only supernatural note they
can strike assuredly is the tragic and almost the diabolic. Only Mr. Max
Beerbohm has been able to imagine Mr. Henry James writing about
Christmas.
Now upon this interregnum, this cold and brilliant waiting-room which
was Henry James at its highest and Wilde at its worst, there broke in
two positive movements, largely honest though essentially unhistoric and
profane, which were destined to crack up the old Victorian solidity past
repair. The first was Bernard Shaw and the Socialists: the second was
Rudyard Kipling and the Imperialists. I take the Socialists first not
because they necessarily came so in order of time, but because they were
less the note upon which the epoch actually ended.
William Morris, of whom we have already spoken, may be said to
introduce the Socialists, but rather in a social sense than a
philosophical. He was their friend, and in a sort of political way,
their father; but he was not their founder, for he would not have
believed a word of what they ultimately came to say.
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