Olive Custance, Nostalgia, and Decadent Conservatism

Abstract

Olive Custance was one of the most prolific women poets published in The Yellow Book, with poems appearing in eight of its thirteen volumes. She is also mentioned in several studies of the fin de siècle; as her 1972 bibliographer Nancy J. Hawkey states: ‘her name is invariably included in contemporary lists of representative poets’ of the 1890s. For example, in 1925, Richard Le Gallienne fondly recalled her ‘flower-like girlish loveliness’ at John Lane’s teas and includes her in a list of prominent ‘minor poets’ of the period. In The Eighteen Nineties (1913), Holbrook Jackson groups her among ‘those poets who give expression to moods more attuned to end-of-the-century emotions’. This fosters the impression that Custance did not continue writing beyond the fin de siècle. Modern critics perpetuate this notion, observing her apparent poetic silence following her final volume, The Inn of Dreams (1911), which itself consisted largely of reprints from The Blue Bird (1905). However, Custance in fact continued publishing long after 1911, producing work throughout the 1920s, 30s and 40s, until her death in 1944. In this article, I will consider why her later work has been overlooked, contextualizing her position in the twentieth century. This investigation provokes challenging questions about how we might address the disquieting political uses to which Decadent poetry may be put.