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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
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+
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+status under the laws that apply to them.
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #50171 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/50171)
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-*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 50171 ***
-
-THE ART OF
-
-AUBREY BEARDSLEY
-
-Introduction by ARTHUR SYMONS
-
-BONI AND LIVERIGHT, INC.
-
-PUBLISHERS -- NEW YORK
-
-1918
-
-
-[Illustration: Aubrey Beardsley]
-
-CONTENTS
-
-
-Preface
-
-Aubrey Beardsley by Arthur Symons
-
-
-    ILLUSTRATIONS
-
-    1. Portrait of Aubrey Beardsley.
-    2. The Litany of Mary Magdalen.
-    3. A Portrait of Aubrey Beardsley. By Himself.
-    4. Incipit Vita Nova.
-    5. Sandro Botticelli.
-    6. "Siegfried." From "The Studio."
-    7. Merlin. From "Le Morte d'Arthur."
-    8. Vignette. From "Le Morte d'Arthur"
-    9. La Beale Isoud at Joyous Gard. From "Le Morte d'Arthur."
-    10. How Queen Guenever Made Her a Nun. From "Le Morte d'Arthur."
-    11. "Of a Neophyte and How the Black Art Was Revealed Unto Him."
-    12. The Kiss of Judas.
-    13. A Suggested Reform in Ballet Costume.
-    14. Baron Verdigris.
-    15. The Woman in the Moon.
-    16. The Peacock Skirt.
-    17. The Black Cape.
-    18. The Platonic Lament.
-    19. Enter Herodias.
-    20. The Eyes of Herod.
-    21. The Stomach Dance.
-    22. The Toilette of Salomé.
-    23. The Dancer's Reward.
-    24. The Climax.
-    25. The Toilette of Salomé. First Drawing.
-    26. John and Salomé.
-    27. Salomé on Settle.
-    28. Design for Tailpiece.
-    29. Design for "Salomé." From "The Studio."
-    30. Design for the Cover of "The Yellow Book" Prospectus.
-    31. Night Piece.
-    32. Portrait of Mrs. Patrick Campbell.
-    33. Title Page Ornament for "The Yellow Book."
-    34. Comedy Ballet of Marionettes, I. From "The Yellow Book." Vol. II.
-    35. Comedy Ballet of Marionettes, II. From "The Yellow Book." Vol. II.
-    36. Comedy Ballet of Marionettes, III.
-    37. Garçons de Café. From "The Yellow Book." Vol. II.
-    38. The Slippers of Cinderella.
-    39. Portrait of Mantegna. From "The Yellow Book." Vol. III.
-    40. The Wagnerites. From "The Yellow Book." Vol. III.
-    41. La Dame Aux Camélias. From "The Yellow Book." Vol. III.
-    42. Madame Réjane.
-    43. Portrait of Balzac.
-    44. Design for Frontispiece to "An Evil Motherhood."
-    45. Design for Front Cover of "Pierrot."
-    46. Design for End Paper of "Pierrot."
-    47. Design for End Paper of "Pierrot."
-    48. Lysistrata.
-    49. An Athenian Woman.
-    50. Myrrhina.
-    51. The Dream.
-    52. The Baron's Prayer.
-    53. The Rape of the Lock.
-    54. Design for the Prospectus of "The Savoy."
-    55. Another Design for the Prospectus of "The Savoy."
-    56. Cover Design. From "The Savoy" No. 1.
-    57. Contents Page. From "The Savoy" No. 1.
-    58. The Abbé. From "Under the Hill."
-    59. The Fourth Tableau of "Das Rheingold."
-    60. Erda. To illustrate "Das Rheingold."
-    61. Flosshilde. To illustrate "Das Rheingold."
-    62. The Death of Pierrot.
-    63. Ave Atque Vale: Catullus, Carmen, Cl.
-    64. Aubrey Beardsley's Book-Plate.
-
-
-
-
-AUBREY BEARDSLEY
-
-AN ESSAY WITH A PREFACE
-
-BY
-
-ARTHUR SYMONS
-
-
-
-
-PREFACE
-
-
-It was in the summer of 1895 that I first met Aubrey Beardsley. A
-publisher had asked me to form and edit a new kind of magazine,
-which was to appeal to the public equally in its letterpress and its
-illustrations: need I say that I am defining the "Savoy"? It was,
-I admit, to have been something of a rival to the "Yellow Book,"
-which had by that time ceased to mark a movement, and had come to be
-little more than a publisher's magazine. I forget exactly when the
-expulsion of Beardsley from the "Yellow Book" had occurred; it had
-been sufficiently recent, at all events, to make Beardsley singularly
-ready to fall in with my project when I went to him and asked him to
-devote himself to illustrating my quarterly. He was supposed, just
-then, to be dying; and as I entered the room, and saw him lying out
-on a couch, horribly white, I wondered if I had come too late. He was
-full of ideas, full of enthusiasm, and I think it was then that he
-suggested the name "Savoy," finally adopted after endless changes and
-uncertainties.
-
-A little later we met again at Dieppe, where for a month I saw him
-daily. It was at Dieppe that the "Savoy" was really planned, and it
-was in the cafe which Mr. Sickert has so often painted that I wrote
-the slightly pettish and defiant "Editorial Note," which made so many
-enemies for the first number. Dieppe just then was a meeting-place for
-the younger generation; some of us spent the whole summer there, lazily
-but profitably; others came and went. Beardsley at that time imagined
-himself to be unable to draw anywhere but in London. He made one or
-two faint attempts, and even prepared a canvas for a picture which was
-never painted, in the hospitable studio in which M. Jacques Blanche
-painted the admirable portrait reproduced in the frontispiece. But he
-found many subjects, some of which he afterwards worked out, in the
-expressive opportunities of the Casino and the beach, lie never walked;
-I never saw him look at the sea; but at night he was almost always to
-be seen watching the gamblers at _petits chevaux_, studying them with a
-sort of hypnotised attention for that picture of "_The Little Horses_,"
-which was never done. He liked the large, deserted rooms, at hours when
-no one was there; the sense of frivolous things caught at a moment of
-suspended life, _en deshabillé_. He would glance occasionally, but
-with more impatience, at the dances, especially the children's dances,
-in the concert room; but he rarely missed a concert, and would glide
-in every afternoon, and sit on the high benches at the side, always
-carrying his large, gilt-leather portfolio with the magnificent, old,
-red-lined folio paper, which he would often open, to write some lines
-in pencil. He was at work then, with an almost pathetic tenacity, at
-his story, never to be finished, the story which never could have been
-finished, "_Under the Hill_," a new version, a parody (like Laforgue's
-parodies, but how unlike them, or anything!) of the story of Venus
-and Tannhäuser. Most of it was done at these concerts, and in the
-little, close writing-room, where visitors sat writing letters. The
-fragment published in the first two numbers of the "_Savoy_" had passed
-through many stages before it found its way there, and would have
-passed through more if it had ever been carried further. Tannhäuser,
-not quite willingly, had put on Abbé's disguise, and there were other
-unwilling disguises in those brilliant, disconnected, fantastic pages,
-in which every sentence was meditated over, written for its own sake,
-and left to find its way in its own paragraph. It could never have
-been finished, for it had never really been begun; but what undoubted,
-singular, literary ability there is in it, all the same!
-
-I think Beardsley would rather have been a great writer than a great
-artist; and I remember, on one occasion, when he had to fill up a
-form of admission to some library to which I was introducing him, his
-insistence on describing himself as "man of letters." At one time
-he was going to write an essay on "_Les Liaisons Dangereuses_," at
-another he had planned a book on Rousseau. But his plans for writing
-changed even more quickly than his plans for doing drawings, and with
-less profitable results in the meantime. He has left no prose except
-that fragment of a story; and in verse only the three pieces published
-in the "_Savoy_." Here, too, he was terribly anxious to excel; and his
-patience over a medium so unfamiliar, and hence so difficult, to him
-as verse, was infinite. We spent two whole days on the grassy ramparts
-of the old castle at Arques-la-Bataille, near Dieppe; I working at
-something or other in one part, he working at "_The Three Musicians_"
-in another. The eight stanzas of that amusing piece of verse are
-really, in their own way, a _tour de force_; by sheer power of will, by
-deliberately saying to himself, "I will write a poem," and by working
-with such strenuous application that at last a certain result, the kind
-of result he had willed, did really come about, he succeeded in doing
-what he had certainly no natural aptitude for doing. How far was that
-more genuine aspect of his genius also an "infinite capacity for taking
-pains?"
-
-The republication by Mr. Lane, the publisher of the "_Yellow Book_,"
-of Beardsley's contributions in prose and verse to the "_Savoy_," its
-"rival," as Mr. Lane correctly calls it, with the illustrations which
-there accompanied them, reopens a little, busy chapter in contemporary
-history. It is the history of yesterday, and it seems already at this
-distance of half a century. Then, what brave petulant outbursts of
-poets and artists, what comic rivalries and reluctances of publishers,
-what droll conflicts of art and morality, what thunders of the trumpets
-of the press! The press is silent now, or admiring; the publishers have
-changed places, and all rivalries are handsomely buried, with laudatory
-inscriptions on their tombstones. The situation has its irony, which
-would have appealed most to the actor most conspicuously absent from
-the scene.
-
-Beardsley was very anxious to be a writer, and, though in his verse
-there was no merit except that of a thing done to order, to one's
-own order, and done without a flaw in the process, there was, in his
-prose, a much finer quality, and his fragment of an unachieved and
-unplanned romance has a savour of its own. It is the work, not of a
-craftsman, but of an amateur, and in this it may be compared with the
-prose of Whistler, so great an artist in his own art and so brilliant
-an amateur in the art of literature. Beardsley too was something of a
-wit, and in his prose one sees hard intellect, untinged with sentiment,
-employed on the work of fancy. He wrote and he saw, unimaginatively,
-and without passion, but with a fierce sensitive precision; and he saw
-by preference things elaborately perverse, full of fantastic detail,
-unlikely and possible things, brought together from the four corners
-of the universe. All those descriptions in "_Under the Hill_" are
-the equivalent of his drawings, and they are of especial interest in
-showing how definitely he saw things, and with what calm minuteness
-he could translate what seemed a feverish drawing into oddly rational
-words. Listen, for instance, to this garden-picture: "In the middle
-was a huge bronze fountain with three basins. From the first rose a
-many-breasted dragon and four little loves mounted upon swans, and
-each love was furnished with a bow and arrow. Two of them that faced
-the monster seemed to recoil in fear, two that were behind made bold
-enough to aim their shafts at him. From the verge of the second sprang
-a circle of slim golden columns that supported silver doves with
-tails and wings spread out. The third, held by a group of grotesquely
-attenuated satyrs, is centred with a thin pipe hung with masks and
-roses and capped with children's heads." The picture was never drawn,
-but does it want more than the drawing?
-
-The prose of "_Under the Hill_" does not arrive at being really good
-prose, but it has felicities that astonish, those felicities by which
-the amateur astonishes the craftsman. The imaginary dedication is the
-best, the most sustained, piece of writing in it, but there is wit
-everywhere, subtly intermingled with fancy, and there are touches of
-color such as this: "Huge moths, so richly winged that they must have
-banqueted upon tapestries and royal stuffs, slept on the pillars that
-flanked either side of the gateway, and the eyes of all the moths
-remained open and were burning and bursting with a mesh of veins."
-Here and there is a thought or a mental sensation like that of "the
-irritation of loveliness that can never be entirely comprehended, or
-ever enjoyed to the utmost." There are many affectations, some copied
-from Oscar Wilde, others personal enough, such as the use of French
-words instead of English ones: "chevelure" for hair, and "pantoufles"
-for slippers. I do not think that Beardsley finally found a place for
-the word which he had adapted from the French, "papillions," instead of
-"papillons" or butterflies; it would have come amusingly, and it was
-one of his pet words. But his whole conception of writing was that of a
-game with words; some obsolete game with a quaint name, like that other
-favorite word of his, "spellicans," for which he did find a place in
-the story.
-
-Taken literally, this fragment is hardly more than a piece of nonsense,
-and was hardly meant to be more than that. Yet, beyond the curiosity
-and ingenuity of the writing, how much there is of real skill in the
-evocation of a certain impossible but quite credible atmosphere! Its
-icy artificiality is indeed one of its qualities, and produces, by
-mere negation, an emotional effect. Beardsley did not believe in his
-own enchantments, was never haunted by his own terrors, and, in his
-queer sympathy and familiarity with evil, had none of the ardors of a
-lost soul. In the place of Faust he would have kept the devil at his
-due distance by a polite incredulity, openly expressed, as to the very
-existence of his interlocutor.
-
-It was on the balcony of the Hotel Henri IV, at Arques, one of those
-September evenings, that I had the only quite serious, almost solemn,
-conversation I ever had with Beardsley. Not long before we had gone
-together to visit Alexandre Dumas fils at Puy, and it was from
-talking of that thoughtful, but entirely, Parisian writer, and his
-touching, in its unreal way so real, "Dame aux Camélias" (the novel,
-not the play), which Beardsley admired so much, that we passed into
-an unexpectedly intimate mood of speculation. Those stars up yonder,
-whether they were really the imprisoning worlds of other creatures like
-ourselves; the strange ways by which the soul might have come and must
-certainly go; death, and the future: it was such things that I found
-him speaking, for once without mockery. And he told me then a singular
-dream or vision which he had had when a child, waking up at night in
-the moonlight and seeing a great crucifix, with a bleeding Christ,
-falling off the wall, where certainly there was not, and had never
-been, any crucifix. It is only by remembering that one conversation,
-that vision, the tone of awe with which he told it, that I can, with a
-great effort, imagine to myself the Beardsley whom I knew with his so
-positive intelligence, his imaginative sight of the very spirit of man
-as a thing of definite outline, transformed finally into the Beardsley
-who died in the peace of the last sacraments of the Church, holding the
-rosary between his fingers.
-
-And yet, if you read carefully the book of letters to an unnamed
-friend, which has been published six years after his death, it will
-be seen that here too, as always, we are in the presence of a real
-thing. In these naked letters we see a man die. And the man dies inch
-by inch, like one who slips inch by inch over a precipice, and knows
-that the grasses at which his fingers tear, clutching their feeble
-roots, are but delaying him for so many instants, and that he must
-soon fall. We see a fine, clear-sighted intellect set on one problem:
-how to get well: then, how to get a little better; and then, how not
-to get worse. He records the weather of each day, and each symptom of
-his disease; with a desperate calmness, which but rarely deserts or
-betrays him. To-day he feels better and can read Laclos; to-morrow he
-is not so well, and he must hear no music. He has pious books and pious
-friends for the days when he is driven back upon himself, and must turn
-aside his attention from suffering which brings despair. Nothing exists
-any longer, outside himself; and there may be safety somewhere, in a
-"preservative girdle" or in a friend's prayer. He asks for both. Both
-are to keep him alive. He meets at Mentone someone who seems worse than
-himself, and who yet "lives on and does things. My spirits have gone
-up immensely since I have known him." A change of sky, the recurrence
-of a symptom: "to-day, alas, there is a downpour and I am miserably
-depressed." He reads S. Alphonsus Liguori, and it is "mere physical
-exhaustion more than hardness of heart that leaves me so apathetic
-and uninterested." He clings to religion as to his friend, thinking
-that it may help him to keep himself in life. He trains himself to be
-gentle, to hope little, to attack the sources of health stealthily. A
-"wonderful stretch of good health," a few whole days of it, makes him
-"tremble at moments." "Don't think me foolish to haggle about a few
-months," he writes, when he is hoping, all the time, that "the end is
-less near than it seems." He is received into the Church, makes his
-first confession, makes his first communion. It seems to him that each
-is a new clutch upon the roots of the grasses.
-
-The whole book is a study in fear, and by its side everything else that
-has been done, imaginatively or directly, on that fierce passion, seems
-mere oratory or a talking beside the question. Here Beardsley is, as
-he is in his drawings, close, absorbed, limited, and unflinching. That
-he should be so honest with his fear; that he should sit down before
-its face and study it feature by feature; that he should never turn
-aside his eyes for more than an instant, make no attempt to escape, but
-sit at home with it, travel with it, see it in his mirror, taste it
-with the sacrament: that is the marvellous thing, and the sign of his
-fundamental sincerity in life and art.
-
-
-
-
-AUBREY BEARDSLEY
-
-
-_Anima naturaliter pagana_, Aubrey Beardsley ended a long career,
-at the age of twenty-six, in the arms of the Church. No artist of
-our time, none certainly whose work has been in black and white, has
-reached a more universal, or a more contested fame; none has formed
-himself, out of such alien elements, a more personal originality of
-manner; none has had so wide an influence on contemporary art. He
-had the fatal speed of those who are to die young; that disquieting
-completeness and extent of knowledge, that absorption of a lifetime
-in an hour, which we find in those who hasten to have done their
-work before noon, knowing that they will not see the evening. He had
-played the piano in drawing-rooms as an infant prodigy, before, I
-suppose, he had ever drawn a line: famous at twenty as a draughtsman,
-he found time, in those incredibly busy years which remained to him,
-to deliberately train himself into a writer of prose which was, in
-its way, as original as his draughtsmanship, and into a writer of
-verse which had at least ingenious and original moments. He seemed
-to have read everything, and had his preferences as adroitly in
-order, as wittily in evidence, as almost any man of letters; indeed,
-he seemed to know more, and was a sounder critic, of books than of
-pictures; with perhaps a deeper feeling for music than for either. His
-conversation had a peculiar kind of brilliance different in order but
-scarcely inferior in quality to that of any other contemporary master
-of that art; a salt, whimsical dogmatism, equally full of convinced
-egoism and of imperturbable keen-sightedness. Generally choosing to
-be paradoxical; and vehement on behalf of any enthusiasm of the mind,
-he was the dupe of none of his own statements, or indeed of his own
-enthusiasms, and, really, very coldly impartial. I scarcely except
-even his own judgment of himself in spite of his petulant, amusing
-self-assertion, so full of the childishness of genius. He thought,
-and was right in thinking, very highly of himself; he admired himself
-enormously; but his intellect would never allow itself to be deceived
-even about his own accomplishments.
-
-This clear, unemotional intellect, emotional only in the perhaps
-highest sense, where emotion almost ceases to be recognizable, in the
-abstract, for ideas, for lines, left him with all his interests in
-life, with all his sociability, of a sort essentially very lonely. Many
-people were devoted to him, but he had, I think, scarcely a friend,
-in the fullest sense of the word; and I doubt if there were more than
-one or two people for whom he felt any real affection. In spite of
-constant ill-health he had am astonishing tranquility of nerves; and
-it was doubtless that rare quality which kept him, after all, alive so
-long. How far he had deliberately acquired command over his nerves and
-his emotions, as he deliberately acquired command over brain and hand,
-I do not know. But there it certainly was, one of the bewildering
-characteristics of so contradictory a temperament.
-
-One of his poses, as people say, one of those things, that is, in
-which he was most sincere, was his care in outwardly conforming to the
-conventions which make for elegance and restraint; his necessity of
-dressing well, of showing no sign of the professional artist. He had a
-great contempt for, what seemed to inferior craftsmen, inspiration, for
-what I have elsewhere called the plenary inspiration of first thoughts;
-and he hated the outward and visible signs of an inward yeastiness and
-incoherency. It amused him to denounce everything, certainly, which
-Baudelaire would have denounced; and, along with some mere _gaminerie_,
-there was a very serious and adequate theory of art at the back of all
-his destructive criticisms. It was a profound thing which he said to
-a friend of mine who asked him whether he ever saw visions: "No," he
-replied, "I do not allow myself to see them except on paper." All his
-art is in that phrase.
-
-And he attained, to the full, one certainly of his many desires, and
-that one, perhaps, of which he was most keenly or most continuously
-conscious: contemporary fame of a popular singer or a professional
-beauty, the fame of Yvette Guilbert or of Cléo de Mérode. And there was
-logic in his insistence on this point, in his eagerness after immediate
-and clamorous success. Others might have waited; he knew that he had
-not the time to wait. After all, posthumous fame is not a very cheering
-prospect to look forward to, on the part of those who have worked
-without recompense, if the pleasure or the relief of work is not enough
-in itself. Every artist has his own secret, beyond the obvious one, of
-why he works, it is generally some unhappiness, some dissatisfaction
-with the things about one, some too desperate or too contemptuous sense
-of the meaning of existence. At one period of his life a man works
-at his art to please a woman; then he works because he is tired of
-pleasing her. Work for the work's sake it always must be, in a profound
-sense; and, with Beardsley, not less certainly than with Blake or with
-Rosetti. But that other, that accidental, significant motive, was, with
-Beardsley, the desire to fill his few working years with the immediate
-echo of a great notoriety.
-
-Like most artists who have thought much of popularity he had an immense
-contempt for the public; and the desire to kick that public into
-admiration, and then to kick it for admiring the wrong thing or not
-knowing why it was admiring, led him into many of his most outrageous
-practical jokes of the pen. He was partly right and partly wrong, for
-he was indiscriminate; and to be indiscriminate is always to be partly
-right and partly wrong. The wish to _épater le bourgeois_ is a natural
-one, and, though a little beside the question, does not necessarily
-lead one astray. The general public, of course, does not in the least
-know why it admires the right thing to-day though it admired the wrong
-thing yesterday. But there is such a thing as denying your Master while
-you are rebuking a servant-girl. Beardsley was without the very sense
-of respect; it was one of his limitations.
-
-And this limitation was an unfortunate one, for it limited his
-ambition. With the power of creating beauty, which should be pure
-beauty, he turned aside, only too often, to that lower kind of beauty
-which is the mere beauty of technique in a composition otherwise
-meaningless, trivial, or grotesque. Saying to himself, "I can do what
-I like; there is nothing I could not do if I chose to, if I chose to
-take the trouble; but why should I offer hard gold when an I.O.U. will
-be just the same? I can pay up whenever the money is really wanted," he
-allowed himself to be content with what he knew would startle, doing
-it with infinite pains, to his own mind conscientiously, but doing it
-with that lack of reverence for great work which is one of the most
-sterlizing characteristics of the present day.
-
-The epithet _fin de siècle_ has been given, somewhat loosely, to a
-great deal of modern French art, and to art which, in one way or
-another, seems to attach itself to contemporary France. Out of the
-great art of Manet, the serious art of Degas, the exquisite art of
-Whistler, all, in such different ways, so modern, there has come into
-existence a new, very modern, very far from great or serious or really
-exquisite kind of art, which has expressed itself largely in the
-"Courrier Français," the "Gil Blas Illustré," and the posters. All this
-art may be said to be what the quite new art of the poster certainly
-is, art meant for the street, for people who are walking fast. It
-comes into competition with the newspapers, with the music-halls; half
-contemptuously, it popularises itself; and, with real qualities and a
-real measure of good intention, finds itself forced to seek for sharp,
-sudden, arresting means of expression. Instead of seeking pure beauty,
-the seriousness and self-absorption of great art, it takes, wilfully
-and for effect, that beauty which is least evident, indeed least
-genuine; nearest to ugliness in the grotesque, nearest to triviality
-in a certain elegant daintiness, nearest also to brutality and the
-spectacular vices. Art is not sought for its own sake, but the manual
-craftsman perfects himself to express a fanciful, ingenious, elaborate,
-somewhat tricky way of seeing things, which he has deliberately
-adopted. It finds its own in the eighteenth century, so that Willette
-becomes a kind of petty, witty Watteau of Montmartre; it parodies
-the art of stained glass, with Grasset and his followers; it juggles
-with iron bars and masses of shadow, like Lautrec. And, in its direct
-assault on the nerves, it pushes naughtiness to obscenity, deforms
-observation into caricature, dexterity of line and handling being
-cultivated as one cultivates a particular, deadly _bottle_ in fencing.
-
-And this art, this art of the day and hour, competes not merely with
-the appeal and the popularity of the theatrical spectacle, but directly
-with theatrical methods, the methods of stage illusion. The art of the
-ballet counts for much, in the evolution of many favorite effects of
-contemporary drawing, and not merely because Degas has drawn dancers,
-with his reserved, essentially classical mastery of form. By its
-rapidity of flight within bounds, by its bird-like and flower-like
-caprices of color and motion, by that appeal to the imagination which
-comes from its silence (to which music is but like an accompanying
-shadow, so closely, so discreetly, does it follow the feet of the
-dancers), by its appeal to the eyes and to the senses, its adorable
-artificiality, the ballet has tempted almost every draughtsman, as
-the interiors of music-halls have also been singularly tempting, with
-their extraordinary tricks of light, their suddenness of gesture, their
-triumphant tinsel, their fantastic humanity. And pantomime, too, in the
-French and correct, rather than in the English and incorrect, sense
-of that word, has had its significant influence. In those pathetic
-gaieties of Willette, in the windy laughter of the frivolities of
-Chéret, it is the masquerade, the English clown or acrobat seen at the
-Folies-Bergère, painted people mimicking puppets, who have begotten
-this masquerading humanity of posters and illustrated papers. And the
-point of view is the point of view of Pierrot--
-
-         "le subtil génie
-    De sa malice infinie
-    De poète-grimacier"--
-
-    Verlaine's _Pierrot gamin_.
-
-Pierrot is one of the types we live, or of the moment, perhaps, out
-of which we are just passing. Pierrot is passionate; but he does not
-believe in great passions. He feels himself to be sickening with a
-fever, or else perilously convalescent; for love is a disease, which he
-is too weak to resist or endure. He has worn his heart on his sleeve
-so long, that it has hardened in the cold air. He knows that his face
-is powdered, and, if he sobs, it is without tears; and it is hard to
-distinguish, under the chalk, if the grimace which twists his mouth
-awry is more laughter or mockery. He knows that he is condemned to be
-always in public, that emotion would be supremely out of keeping with
-his costume, that he must remember to be fantastic if he would not be
-merely ridiculous. And so he becomes exquisitely false, dreading above
-all things that "one touch of nature" which would ruffle his disguise,
-and leave him defenceless. Simplicity, in him, being the most laughable
-thing in the world, he becomes learned, perverse, intellectualising his
-pleasures, brutalising his intellect; his mournful contemplation of
-things becoming a kind of grotesque joy, which he expresses in the only
-symbols at his command, tracing his Giotto's O with the elegance of his
-pirouette.
-
-And Beardsley, with almost more than the Parisian's deference to
-Paris, and to the moment, was, more than any Parisian, this _Pierrot
-gamin_. He was more than that, but he was that: to be that was part
-of what he learnt from France. It helped him to the pose which helped
-him to reveal himself: as Burne-Jones had helped him when he did
-the illustrations to the "Morte d'Arthur," (Ill. 7-10) as Japanese
-art helped him to free himself from that influence, as Eisen and
-Saint-Aubin showed him the way to the "Rape of the Lock." (Ill. 53)
-He had that originality which surrenders to every influence, yet
-surrenders to absorb, not to be absorbed; that originality which,
-constantly shifting, is true always to its centre. Whether he learnt
-from M. Grasset or from Mr. Ricketts, from an 1830 fashion-plate,
-or from an engraved plate by Hogarth, whether the scenery of
-Arques-la-Bataille composed itself into a pattern in his mind, or,
-in the Casino at Dieppe, he made a note of the design of a looped-up
-window-blind, he was always drawing to himself, out of the order of
-art or the confusion of natural things, the thing he wanted, the thing
-he could make his own. And he found, in the French art of the moment,
-a joyous sadness, the service to God of Mephistopheles, which his own
-temperament and circumstances were waiting to suggest to him--.
-
-"In more ways than one do men sacrifice to the rebellious angels," says
-St. Augustine; and Beardsley's sacrifice, together with that of all
-great decadent art, the art of Rops or the art of Baudelaire, is really
-a sacrifice to the eternal beauty, and only seemingly to the powers of
-evil. And here let me say that I have no concern with what neither he
-nor I could have had absolute knowledge of, his own intention in his
-work. A man's intention, it must be remembered, from the very fact that
-it is conscious, is much less intimately himself than the sentiment
-which his work conveys to me. So large is the sub-conscious element in
-all artistic creation, that I should have doubted whether Beardsley
-himself knew what he intended to do, in this or that really significant
-drawing. Admitting that he could tell exactly what he had intended, I
-should be quite prepared to show that he had really done the very
-contrary.
-
-Thus when I say he was a profoundly spiritual artist, though seeming to
-care chiefly for the manual part of his work; that he expresses evil
-with an intensity which lifted it into a region almost of asceticism,
-though attempting, not seldom, little more than a joke or a caprice in
-line: and that he was above all, though almost against his own will,
-a satirist who has seen the ideal; I am putting forward no paradox,
-nothing really contradictory, but a simple analysis of the work as it
-exists.
-
-At times he attains pure beauty, has the unimpaired vision; in the
-best of the "Salomé" (Ills. 15-29) designs here and there afterwards.
-From the first it is a diabolic beauty, but it is not yet divided
-against itself. The consciousness of sin is always there, but it is
-sin first transfigured by beauty, and then disclosed by beauty; sin,
-conscious of itself, of its inability to escape itself, and showing in
-its ugliness the law it has broken. His world is a world of phantoms,
-in which the desire of the perfecting of mortal sensations, a desire
-of infinity, has over-passed mortal limits, and poised them, so faint,
-so quivering, so passionate for flight, in a hopeless and strenuous
-immobility. They have the sensitiveness of the spirit, and that bodily
-sensitiveness which wastes their veins and imprisons them in the
-attitude of their luxurious meditation. They are too thoughtful to
-be ever really simple, or really absorbed by either flesh or spirit.
-They have nothing of what is "healthy" or merely "animal" in their
-downward course towards repentance; no overwhelming passion hurries
-them beyond themselves; they do not capitulate to an open assault of
-the enemy of souls. It is the soul in them that sins, sorrowfully,
-without reluctance, inevitably. Their bodies are faint and eager with
-wantonness; they desire more pleasure than there is in the world,
-fiercer and more exquisite pains, a more intolerable suspense. They
-have put off the common burdens of humanity, and put on that loneliness
-which is the rest of saints and the unrest of those who have sinned
-with the intellect. They are a little lower than the angels, and they
-walk between these and the fallen angels, without part or lot in the
-world.
-
-Here, then, we have a sort of abstract spiritual corruption, revealed
-in beautiful form; sin transfigured by beauty. And here, even if we
-go no further, is an art intensely spiritual, an art in which evil
-purifies itself by its own intensity, and the beauty which transfigures
-it. The one thing in the world which is without hope is that mediocrity
-which is the sluggish content of inert matter. Better be vividly
-awake to evil than, in mere somnolence, close the very issues and
-approaches of good and evil. For evil itself, carried to the point of
-a perverse ecstasy, becomes a kind of good, by means of that energy
-which, otherwise directed, is virtue; and which can never, no matter
-how its course may be changed, fail to retain something of its original
-efficacy. The devil is nearer to God, by the whole height from which
-he fell, than the average man who has not recognised his own need to
-rejoice or to repent. And so a profound spiritual corruption, instead
-of being a more "immortal" thing than the gross and pestiferous
-humanity of Hogarth or of Rowlandson, is more nearly, in the final
-and abstract sense, moral, for it is the triumph of the spirit over
-the flesh, to no matter what end. It is a form of divine possession,
-by which the inactive and materialising soul is set in fiery motion,
-lured from the ground, into at least a certain high liberty. And
-so we find evil justified of itself, and an art consecrated to the
-revelation of evil equally justified; its final justification being
-that declared by Plotinus, in his treatise "On the Nature of Good
-and Evil." "But evil is permitted to remain by itself alone on account
-of the superior power and nature of good; because it appears from
-necessity everywhere comprehended and bound, in beautiful bands, like
-men fettered with golden chains, lest it should be produced openly to
-the views of divinity, or lest mankind should always behold its horrid
-shape when perfectly naked; and such is the supervening power of good,
-that whenever a glimpse of perfect evil is obtained we are immediately
-recalled to the memory of good by the image of the beautiful with which
-evil is invested."
-
-In those drawings of Beardsley which are grotesque rather than
-beautiful, in which now all the beauty takes refuge, is itself a moral
-judgment. Look at that drawing called "The Scarlet Pastorale."[1] In
-front, a bloated harlequin struts close to the footlights, outside the
-play, on which he turns his back; beyond, sacramental candles have been
-lighted, and are guttering down in solitude, under an unseen wind. And
-between, on the sheer darkness of the stage, a bald and plumed Pierrot,
-holding in his vast, collapsing paunch with a mere rope of roses, shows
-the cloven foot, while Pierrette points at him in screaming horror,
-and the fat dancer turns on her toes indifferently. Need we go further
-to show how much more than Gautier's meaning lies in the old paradox
-of "Mademoiselle de Maupin," that "perfection of line is virtue?" That
-line which rounds the deformity of the cloven-footed sin, the line
-itself, is at once the revelation and the condemnation of vice, for it
-is part of that artistic logic which is morality.
-
-Beardsley is the satirist of an age without convictions, and he can
-but paint hell as Baudelaire did, without pointing for contrast to any
-contemporary paradise. He employs the same rhetoric as Baudelaire,
-a method of emphasis which it is uncritical to think insecure. In
-that terrible annunciation of evil which he called "The Mysterious
-Rose-Garden," the lantern-bearing angel with winged sandals whispers,
-from among the falling roses, tidings of more than "pleasant sins."
-The leering dwarfs, the "monkeys," by which the mystics symbolised
-the earthlier vices; those immense bodies swollen with the lees of
-pleasure, and those cloaked and masked desires shuddering in gardens
-and smiling ambiguously at interminable toilets; are part of a
-symbolism which loses nothing by lack of emphasis. And the peculiar
-efficacy of this satire is that it is so much the satire of desire
-returning upon itself, the mockery of desire enjoyed, the mockery of
-desire denied. It is because he loves beauty that beauty's degradation
-obsesses him; it is because he is supremely conscious of virtue that
-vice has power to lay hold upon him. And, unlike those other acceptable
-satirists of our day, with whom satire exhausts itself in the rebuke
-of a drunkard leaning against a lamp-post, or a lady paying the wrong
-compliment in a drawing-room, he is the satirist of essential things;
-it is always the soul, and not the body's discontent only, which cries
-out of these insatiable eyes, that have looked on all their lusts,
-and out of these bitter mouths, that have eaten the dust of all their
-sweetness, and out of these hands, that have laboured delicately for
-nothing, and out of these feet, that have run after vanities. They
-are so sorrowful because they have seen beauty, and because they have
-departed from the line of beauty.
-
-And after all, the secret of Beardsley is there; in the line itself
-rather than in anything, intellectually realised, which the line is
-intended to express. With Beardsley everything was a question of form:
-his interest in his work began when the paper was before him and the
-pen in his hand. And so, in one sense, he may be said never to have
-known what he wanted to do, while, in another, he knew very precisely
-indeed. He was ready to do, within certain limits, almost anything you
-suggested to him; as, when left to himself, he was content to follow
-the caprice of the moment. What he was sure of was his power of doing
-exactly what he proposed to himself to do: the thing itself might be
-"Salomé" or "Belinda," "Ali Baba" or "Réjane," the "Morte d'Arthur" or
-the "Rheingold" or the "Liaisons Dangereuses;" the design might be for
-an edition of a classic or for the cover of a catalogue of second-hand
-books. And the design might seem to have no relation with the title of
-its subject, and, indeed, might have none: its relation was of line to
-line within the limits of its own border, and to nothing else in the
-world. Thus he could change his whole manner of working five or six
-times over in the course of as many years, seem to employ himself much
-of the time on trivial subjects, and yet retain, almost unimpaired,
-an originality which consisted in the extreme beauty and the absolute
-certainty of design.
-
-It was a common error, at one time, to say that Beardsley could not
-draw. He certainly did not draw the human body with any attempt at
-rendering its own lines, taken by themselves; indeed, one of his
-latest drawings, an initial letter to "Volpone," is almost the first
-in which he has drawn a nude figure realistically. But he could draw,
-with extraordinary skill, in what is after all the essential way: he
-could make a line do what he wanted it to do, express the conception
-of form which it was his intention to express; and this is what the
-conventional draughtsman, Bouguereau, for instance, cannot do. The
-conventional draughtsman, any Academy student, will draw a line which
-shows quite accurately the curve of a human body, but all his science
-of drawing will not make you feel that line, will not make that line
-pathetic, as in the little, drooping body which a satyr and a Pierrot
-are laying in a puff-powder coffin, in the tail-piece to "Salomé."
-(Ill. 28.)
-
-And then, it must never be forgotten, Beardsley was a decorative
-artist, and not anything else. From almost the very first he accepted
-convention; he set himself to see things as pattern. Taking freely
-all that the Japanese could give him, that release from the bondage
-of what we call real things, which comes to one man from an intense
-spirituality, to another from a consciousness of material form so
-intense that it becomes abstract, he made the world over again in his
-head, as if it existed only when it was thus re-made, and not even
-then, until it had been set down in black line on a white surface,
-in white line on a black surface. Working, as the decorative artist
-must work, in symbols almost as arbitrary, almost as fixed, as the
-squares of a chess-board, he swept together into his pattern all the
-incongruous things in the world, weaving them into congruity by his
-pattern. Using the puff-box, the toilet-table, the ostrich-feather hat,
-with a full consciousness of their suggestive quality in a drawing of
-archaic times, a drawing purposely fantastic, he put these things to
-beautiful uses, because he liked their forms, and because his space of
-white or black seemed to require some such arrangement of lines. They
-were the minims and crotchets by which he wrote down his music; they
-made the music, but they were not the music.
-
-In the "Salomé" (Ills. 15-29) drawings, in most of the "Yellow Book"
-(Ills. 33, 34, 35, 37, 40, 41) drawings, we see Beardsley under this
-mainly Japanese influence; with, now and later, in his less serious
-work the but half-admitted influence of what was most actual, perhaps
-most temporary, in the French art of the day. Pierrot gamin, in
-"Salomé" itself, alternates, in such irreverences as the design of
-"The Black Cape," (Ill. 17) with the creator of the noble line, in the
-austere and terrible design of "The Climax," (Ill. 24) the ornate and
-vehement design of "The Peacock Skirt." (Ill. 16.) Here we get pure
-outline, as in the frontispiece; a mysterious intricacy, as in the
-border of the title-page and of the table of contents; a paradoxical
-beauty of mere wilfulness, but a wilfulness which has its meaning,
-its excuse, its pictorial justification, as in "The Toilette." (Ill.
-22). The "Yellow Book" and the first drawings for the "Savoy," (Ills.
-54-57) a new influence has come into the work, the influence of the
-French eighteenth century. This influence, artificial as it is, draws
-him nearer, though somewhat unquietly nearer, to nature. Drawings like
-"The Fruit Bearers," in the first number of the "Savoy," with its solid
-and elaborate richness of ornament, or "The Coiffing," in the third
-number, with its delicate and elaborate grace, its witty concentration
-of line; drawings like the illustrations to the "Rape of the Lock,"
-(Ill. 53) have, with less extravagance, and also a less strenuous
-intellectual effort, a new mastery of elegant form, not too far removed
-from nature while still subordinated to the effect of decoration, to
-the instinct of line. In the illustrations to Ernest Dowson's "Pierrot
-of the Minute," (Ills. 45-47) we have a more deliberate surrender,
-for the moment, to Eisen and Saint-Aubin, as yet another manner
-is seen working itself out. The illustrations to "Mademoiselle de
-Maupin," seemed to me, when I first saw them, with the exception of
-one extremely beautiful design in colour, to show a certain falling
-off in power, an actual weakness in the handling of the pen. But, in
-their not quite successful feeling after natural form, they did but
-represent, as I afterwards found, the moment of transition to what must
-now remain for us, and may well remain, Beardsley's latest manner. The
-four initial letters to "Volpone," the last of which was finished not
-more than three weeks before his death, have a new quality both of hand
-and of mind. They are done in pencil, and they lose, as such drawings
-are bound to lose, very greatly in the reduced reproduction. But, in
-the original, they are certainly, in sheer technical skill, equal
-to anything he had ever done, and they bring at the last, and with
-complete success, nature itself into the pattern. And here, under some
-solemn influence, the broken line of beauty has reunited; "the care is
-over," and the trouble has gone out of this no less fantastic world, in
-which Pan still smiles from his terminal column among the trees, but
-without the old malice. Human and animal form reassert themselves, with
-a new dignity, under this new respect for their capabilities. Beardsley
-has accepted the convention of nature itself, turning it to his own
-uses, extracting from it his own symbols, but no longer rejecting it
-for a convention entirely of his own making. And thus in his last work,
-done under the very shadow of death, we find new possibilities for an
-art, conceived as pure line, conducted through mere pattern, which,
-after many hesitations, has resolved finally upon the great compromise,
-that compromise which the greatest artists have made, between the
-mind's outline and the outline of visible things.
-
-[1] This drawing is not reproduced in this volume.
-
-
-[Illustrations: see above.]
-
-
-
-
-
-End of Project Gutenberg's The Art of Aubrey Beardsley, by Aubrey Beardsley
-
-
-*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 50171 ***
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-<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 50171 ***</div>
-
-
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
-<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="500" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<h1>THE ART OF</h1>
-
-<h1>AUBREY BEARDSLEY</h1>
-
-<h4>Introduction by ARTHUR SYMONS</h4>
-
-<h5>BONI AND LIVERIGHT, INC.</h5>
-
-<h5>PUBLISHERS &mdash; NEW YORK</h5>
-
-<h5>1918</h5>
-
-<hr class="full" />
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px;">
-<a id="art001"></a>
-<img src="images/art_001.jpg" width="450" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">Aubrey Beardsley</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-
-<p class="caption" style="font-size: 0.8em; margin-left: 20%;">CONTENTS</p>
-
-<p style="margin-left: 20%;"><a href="#PREFACE">Preface</a></p>
-
-<p style="margin-left: 20%;"><a href="#AUBREY_BEARDSLEY">Aubrey Beardsley by Arthur Symons</a></p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-<p style="margin-left: 20%;">
-<span class="caption" style="font-size: 0.8em;">ILLUSTRATIONS</span><br />
-<br />
-1. <a href="#art001">Portrait of Aubrey Beardsley.</a><br />
-2. <a href="#art002">The Litany of Mary Magdalen.</a><br />
-3. <a href="#art003">A Portrait of Aubrey Beardsley. By Himself.</a><br />
-4. <a href="#art004">Incipit Vita Nova.</a><br />
-5. <a href="#art005">Sandro Botticelli.</a><br />
-6. <a href="#art006">"Siegfried." From "The Studio."</a><br />
-7. <a href="#art007">Merlin. From "Le Morte d'Arthur."</a><br />
-8. <a href="#art008">Vignette. From "Le Morte d'Arthur"</a><br />
-9. <a href="#art009">La Beale Isoud at Joyous Gard. From "Le Morte d'Arthur."</a><br />
-10. <a href="#art010">How Queen Guenever Made Her a Nun. From "Le Morte d'Arthur."</a><br />
-11. <a href="#art011">"Of a Neophyte and How the Black Art Was Revealed Unto Him."</a><br />
-12. <a href="#art012">The Kiss of Judas.</a><br />
-13. <a href="#art013">A Suggested Reform in Ballet Costume.</a><br />
-14. <a href="#art014">Baron Verdigris.</a><br />
-15. <a href="#art015">The Woman in the Moon.</a><br />
-16. <a href="#art016">The Peacock Skirt.</a><br />
-17. <a href="#art017">The Black Cape.</a><br />
-18. <a href="#art018">The Platonic Lament.</a><br />
-19. <a href="#art019">Enter Herodias.</a><br />
-20. <a href="#art020">The Eyes of Herod.</a><br />
-21. <a href="#art021">The Stomach Dance.</a><br />
-22. <a href="#art022">The Toilette of Salomé.</a><br />
-23. <a href="#art023">The Dancer's Reward.</a><br />
-24. <a href="#art024">The Climax.</a><br />
-25. <a href="#art025">The Toilette of Salomé. First Drawing.</a><br />
-26. <a href="#art026">John and Salomé.</a><br />
-27. <a href="#art027">Salomé on Settee.</a><br />
-28. <a href="#art028">Design for Tailpiece.</a><br />
-29. <a href="#art029">Design for "Salomé." From "The Studio."</a><br />
-30. <a href="#art030">Design for the Cover of "The Yellow Book" Prospectus.</a><br />
-31. <a href="#art031">Night Piece.</a><br />
-32. <a href="#art032">Portrait of Mrs. Patrick Campbell.</a><br />
-33. <a href="#art033">Title Page Ornament for "The Yellow Book."</a><br />
-34. <a href="#art034">Comedy Ballet of Marionettes, I. From "The Yellow Book." Vol. II.</a><br />
-35. <a href="#art035">Comedy Ballet of Marionettes, II. From "The Yellow Book." Vol. II.</a><br />
-36. <a href="#art036">Comedy Ballet of Marionettes, III.</a><br />
-37. <a href="#art037">Garçons de Café. From "The Yellow Book." Vol. II.</a><br />
-38. <a href="#art038">The Slippers of Cinderella.</a><br />
-39. <a href="#art039">Portrait of Mantegna. From "The Yellow Book." Vol. III.</a><br />
-40. <a href="#art040">The Wagnerites. From "The Yellow Book." Vol. III.</a><br />
-41. <a href="#art041">La Dame Aux Camélias. From "The Yellow Book." Vol. III.</a><br />
-42. <a href="#art042">Madame Réjane.</a><br />
-43. <a href="#art043">Portrait of Balzac.</a><br />
-44. <a href="#art044">Design for Frontispiece to "An Evil Motherhood."</a><br />
-45. <a href="#art045">Design for Front Cover of "Pierrot."</a><br />
-46. <a href="#art046">Design for End Paper of "Pierrot."</a><br />
-47. <a href="#art047">Design for End Paper of "Pierrot."</a><br />
-48. <a href="#art048">Lysistrata.</a><br />
-49. <a href="#art049">An Athenian Woman.</a><br />
-50. <a href="#art050">Myrrhina.</a><br />
-51. <a href="#art051">The Dream.</a><br />
-52. <a href="#art052">The Baron's Prayer.</a><br />
-53. <a href="#art053">The Rape of the Lock.</a><br />
-54. <a href="#art054">Design for the Prospectus of "The Savoy."</a><br />
-55. <a href="#art055">Another Design for the Prospectus of "The Savoy."</a><br />
-56. <a href="#art056">Cover Design. From "The Savoy" No. 1.</a><br />
-57. <a href="#art057">Contents Page. From "The Savoy" No. 1.</a><br />
-58. <a href="#art058">The Abbé. From "Under the Hill."</a><br />
-59. <a href="#art059">The Fourth Tableau of "Das Rheingold."</a><br />
-60. <a href="#art060">Erda. To illustrate "Das Rheingold."</a><br />
-61. <a href="#art061">Flosshilde. To illustrate "Das Rheingold."</a><br />
-62. <a href="#art062">The Death of Pierrot.</a><br />
-63. <a href="#art063">Ave Atque Vale: Catullus, Carmen, Cl.</a><br />
-64. <a href="#art064">Aubrey Beardsley's Book-Plate.</a><br />
-</p>
-
-
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-<h3>AUBREY BEARDSLEY</h3>
-
-<h4>AN ESSAY WITH A PREFACE</h4>
-
-<h5>BY</h5>
-
-<h4>ARTHUR SYMONS</h4>
-
-
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-<h5><a name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE">PREFACE</a></h5>
-
-
-<p>It was in the summer of 1895 that I first met Aubrey Beardsley. A
-publisher had asked me to form and edit a new kind of magazine,
-which was to appeal to the public equally in its letterpress and its
-illustrations: need I say that I am defining the "Savoy"? It was,
-I admit, to have been something of a rival to the "Yellow Book,"
-which had by that time ceased to mark a movement, and had come to be
-little more than a publisher's magazine. I forget exactly when the
-expulsion of Beardsley from the "Yellow Book" had occurred; it had
-been sufficiently recent, at all events, to make Beardsley singularly
-ready to fall in with my project when I went to him and asked him to
-devote himself to illustrating my quarterly. He was supposed, just
-then, to be dying; and as I entered the room, and saw him lying out
-on a couch, horribly white, I wondered if I had come too late. He was
-full of ideas, full of enthusiasm, and I think it was then that he
-suggested the name "Savoy," finally adopted after endless changes and
-uncertainties.</p>
-
-<p>A little later we met again at Dieppe, where for a month I saw him
-daily. It was at Dieppe that the "Savoy" was really planned, and it
-was in the cafe which Mr. Sickert has so often painted that I wrote
-the slightly pettish and defiant "Editorial Note," which made so many
-enemies for the first number. Dieppe just then was a meeting-place for
-the younger generation; some of us spent the whole summer there, lazily
-but profitably; others came and went. Beardsley at that time imagined
-himself to be unable to draw anywhere but in London. He made one or
-two faint attempts, and even prepared a canvas for a picture which was
-never painted, in the hospitable studio in which M. Jacques Blanche
-painted the admirable portrait reproduced in the frontispiece. But he
-found many subjects, some of which he afterwards worked out, in the
-expressive opportunities of the Casino and the beach, lie never walked;
-I never saw him look at the sea; but at night he was almost always to
-be seen watching the gamblers at <i>petits chevaux</i>, studying them with a
-sort of hypnotised attention for that picture of "<i>The Little Horses</i>,"
-which was never done. He liked the large, deserted rooms, at hours when
-no one was there; the sense of frivolous things caught at a moment of
-suspended life, <i>en deshabillé</i>. He would glance occasionally, but
-with more impatience, at the dances, especially the children's dances,
-in the concert room; but he rarely missed a concert, and would glide
-in every afternoon, and sit on the high benches at the side, always
-carrying his large, gilt-leather portfolio with the magnificent, old,
-red-lined folio paper, which he would often open, to write some lines
-in pencil. He was at work then, with an almost pathetic tenacity, at
-his story, never to be finished, the story which never could have been
-finished, "<i>Under the Hill</i>," a new version, a parody (like Laforgue's
-parodies, but how unlike them, or anything!) of the story of Venus
-and Tannhäuser. Most of it was done at these concerts, and in the
-little, close writing-room, where visitors sat writing letters. The
-fragment published in the first two numbers of the "<i>Savoy</i>" had passed
-through many stages before it found its way there, and would have
-passed through more if it had ever been carried further. Tannhäuser,
-not quite willingly, had put on Abbé's disguise, and there were other
-unwilling disguises in those brilliant, disconnected, fantastic pages,
-in which every sentence was meditated over, written for its own sake,
-and left to find its way in its own paragraph. It could never have
-been finished, for it had never really been begun; but what undoubted,
-singular, literary ability there is in it, all the same!</p>
-
-<p>I think Beardsley would rather have been a great writer than a great
-artist; and I remember, on one occasion, when he had to fill up a
-form of admission to some library to which I was introducing him, his
-insistence on describing himself as "man of letters." At one time
-he was going to write an essay on "<i>Les Liaisons Dangereuses</i>," at
-another he had planned a book on Rousseau. But his plans for writing
-changed even more quickly than his plans for doing drawings, and with
-less profitable results in the meantime. He has left no prose except
-that fragment of a story; and in verse only the three pieces published
-in the "<i>Savoy</i>." Here, too, he was terribly anxious to excel; and his
-patience over a medium so unfamiliar, and hence so difficult, to him
-as verse, was infinite. We spent two whole days on the grassy ramparts
-of the old castle at Arques-la-Bataille, near Dieppe; I working at
-something or other in one part, he working at "<i>The Three Musicians</i>"
-in another. The eight stanzas of that amusing piece of verse are
-really, in their own way, a <i>tour de force</i>; by sheer power of will, by
-deliberately saying to himself, "I will write a poem," and by working
-with such strenuous application that at last a certain result, the kind
-of result he had willed, did really come about, he succeeded in doing
-what he had certainly no natural aptitude for doing. How far was that
-more genuine aspect of his genius also an "infinite capacity for taking
-pains?"</p>
-
-<p>The republication by Mr. Lane, the publisher of the "<i>Yellow Book</i>,"
-of Beardsley's contributions in prose and verse to the "<i>Savoy</i>," its
-"rival," as Mr. Lane correctly calls it, with the illustrations which
-there accompanied them, reopens a little, busy chapter in contemporary
-history. It is the history of yesterday, and it seems already at this
-distance of half a century. Then, what brave petulant outbursts of
-poets and artists, what comic rivalries and reluctances of publishers,
-what droll conflicts of art and morality, what thunders of the trumpets
-of the press! The press is silent now, or admiring; the publishers have
-changed places, and all rivalries are handsomely buried, with laudatory
-inscriptions on their tombstones. The situation has its irony, which
-would have appealed most to the actor most conspicuously absent from
-the scene.</p>
-
-<p>Beardsley was very anxious to be a writer, and, though in his verse
-there was no merit except that of a thing done to order, to one's
-own order, and done without a flaw in the process, there was, in his
-prose, a much finer quality, and his fragment of an unachieved and
-unplanned romance has a savour of its own. It is the work, not of a
-craftsman, but of an amateur, and in this it may be compared with the
-prose of Whistler, so great an artist in his own art and so brilliant
-an amateur in the art of literature. Beardsley too was something of a
-wit, and in his prose one sees hard intellect, untinged with sentiment,
-employed on the work of fancy. He wrote and he saw, unimaginatively,
-and without passion, but with a fierce sensitive precision; and he saw
-by preference things elaborately perverse, full of fantastic detail,
-unlikely and possible things, brought together from the four corners
-of the universe. All those descriptions in "<i>Under the Hill</i>" are
-the equivalent of his drawings, and they are of especial interest in
-showing how definitely he saw things, and with what calm minuteness
-he could translate what seemed a feverish drawing into oddly rational
-words. Listen, for instance, to this garden-picture: "In the middle
-was a huge bronze fountain with three basins. From the first rose a
-many-breasted dragon and four little loves mounted upon swans, and
-each love was furnished with a bow and arrow. Two of them that faced
-the monster seemed to recoil in fear, two that were behind made bold
-enough to aim their shafts at him. From the verge of the second sprang
-a circle of slim golden columns that supported silver doves with
-tails and wings spread out. The third, held by a group of grotesquely
-attenuated satyrs, is centred with a thin pipe hung with masks and
-roses and capped with children's heads." The picture was never drawn,
-but does it want more than the drawing?</p>
-
-<p>The prose of "<i>Under the Hill</i>" does not arrive at being really good
-prose, but it has felicities that astonish, those felicities by which
-the amateur astonishes the craftsman. The imaginary dedication is the
-best, the most sustained, piece of writing in it, but there is wit
-everywhere, subtly intermingled with fancy, and there are touches of
-color such as this: "Huge moths, so richly winged that they must have
-banqueted upon tapestries and royal stuffs, slept on the pillars that
-flanked either side of the gateway, and the eyes of all the moths
-remained open and were burning and bursting with a mesh of veins."
-Here and there is a thought or a mental sensation like that of "the
-irritation of loveliness that can never be entirely comprehended, or
-ever enjoyed to the utmost." There are many affectations, some copied
-from Oscar Wilde, others personal enough, such as the use of French
-words instead of English ones: "chevelure" for hair, and "pantoufles"
-for slippers. I do not think that Beardsley finally found a place for
-the word which he had adapted from the French, "papillions," instead of
-"papillons" or butterflies; it would have come amusingly, and it was
-one of his pet words. But his whole conception of writing was that of a
-game with words; some obsolete game with a quaint name, like that other
-favorite word of his, "spellicans," for which he did find a place in
-the story.</p>
-
-<p>Taken literally, this fragment is hardly more than a piece of nonsense,
-and was hardly meant to be more than that. Yet, beyond the curiosity
-and ingenuity of the writing, how much there is of real skill in the
-evocation of a certain impossible but quite credible atmosphere! Its
-icy artificiality is indeed one of its qualities, and produces, by
-mere negation, an emotional effect. Beardsley did not believe in his
-own enchantments, was never haunted by his own terrors, and, in his
-queer sympathy and familiarity with evil, had none of the ardors of a
-lost soul. In the place of Faust he would have kept the devil at his
-due distance by a polite incredulity, openly expressed, as to the very
-existence of his interlocutor.</p>
-
-<p>It was on the balcony of the Hotel Henri IV, at Arques, one of those
-September evenings, that I had the only quite serious, almost solemn,
-conversation I ever had with Beardsley. Not long before we had gone
-together to visit Alexandre Dumas fils at Puy, and it was from
-talking of that thoughtful, but entirely, Parisian writer, and his
-touching, in its unreal way so real, "Dame aux Camélias" (the novel,
-not the play), which Beardsley admired so much, that we passed into
-an unexpectedly intimate mood of speculation. Those stars up yonder,
-whether they were really the imprisoning worlds of other creatures like
-ourselves; the strange ways by which the soul might have come and must
-certainly go; death, and the future: it was such things that I found
-him speaking, for once without mockery. And he told me then a singular
-dream or vision which he had had when a child, waking up at night in
-the moonlight and seeing a great crucifix, with a bleeding Christ,
-falling off the wall, where certainly there was not, and had never
-been, any crucifix. It is only by remembering that one conversation,
-that vision, the tone of awe with which he told it, that I can, with a
-great effort, imagine to myself the Beardsley whom I knew with his so
-positive intelligence, his imaginative sight of the very spirit of man
-as a thing of definite outline, transformed finally into the Beardsley
-who died in the peace of the last sacraments of the Church, holding the
-rosary between his fingers.</p>
-
-<p>And yet, if you read carefully the book of letters to an unnamed
-friend, which has been published six years after his death, it will
-be seen that here too, as always, we are in the presence of a real
-thing. In these naked letters we see a man die. And the man dies inch
-by inch, like one who slips inch by inch over a precipice, and knows
-that the grasses at which his fingers tear, clutching their feeble
-roots, are but delaying him for so many instants, and that he must
-soon fall. We see a fine, clear-sighted intellect set on one problem:
-how to get well: then, how to get a little better; and then, how not
-to get worse. He records the weather of each day, and each symptom of
-his disease; with a desperate calmness, which but rarely deserts or
-betrays him. To-day he feels better and can read Laclos; to-morrow he
-is not so well, and he must hear no music. He has pious books and pious
-friends for the days when he is driven back upon himself, and must turn
-aside his attention from suffering which brings despair. Nothing exists
-any longer, outside himself; and there may be safety somewhere, in a
-"preservative girdle" or in a friend's prayer. He asks for both. Both
-are to keep him alive. He meets at Mentone someone who seems worse than
-himself, and who yet "lives on and does things. My spirits have gone
-up immensely since I have known him." A change of sky, the recurrence
-of a symptom: "to-day, alas, there is a downpour and I am miserably
-depressed." He reads S. Alphonsus Liguori, and it is "mere physical
-exhaustion more than hardness of heart that leaves me so apathetic
-and uninterested." He clings to religion as to his friend, thinking
-that it may help him to keep himself in life. He trains himself to be
-gentle, to hope little, to attack the sources of health stealthily. A
-"wonderful stretch of good health," a few whole days of it, makes him
-"tremble at moments." "Don't think me foolish to haggle about a few
-months," he writes, when he is hoping, all the time, that "the end is
-less near than it seems." He is received into the Church, makes his
-first confession, makes his first communion. It seems to him that each
-is a new clutch upon the roots of the grasses.</p>
-
-<p>The whole book is a study in fear, and by its side everything else that
-has been done, imaginatively or directly, on that fierce passion, seems
-mere oratory or a talking beside the question. Here Beardsley is, as
-he is in his drawings, close, absorbed, limited, and unflinching. That
-he should be so honest with his fear; that he should sit down before
-its face and study it feature by feature; that he should never turn
-aside his eyes for more than an instant, make no attempt to escape, but
-sit at home with it, travel with it, see it in his mirror, taste it
-with the sacrament: that is the marvellous thing, and the sign of his
-fundamental sincerity in life and art.</p>
-
-
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-<h5><a name="AUBREY_BEARDSLEY" id="AUBREY_BEARDSLEY">AUBREY BEARDSLEY</a></h5>
-
-
-<p><i>Anima naturaliter pagana</i>, Aubrey Beardsley ended a long career,
-at the age of twenty-six, in the arms of the Church. No artist of
-our time, none certainly whose work has been in black and white, has
-reached a more universal, or a more contested fame; none has formed
-himself, out of such alien elements, a more personal originality of
-manner; none has had so wide an influence on contemporary art. He
-had the fatal speed of those who are to die young; that disquieting
-completeness and extent of knowledge, that absorption of a lifetime
-in an hour, which we find in those who hasten to have done their
-work before noon, knowing that they will not see the evening. He had
-played the piano in drawing-rooms as an infant prodigy, before, I
-suppose, he had ever drawn a line: famous at twenty as a draughtsman,
-he found time, in those incredibly busy years which remained to him,
-to deliberately train himself into a writer of prose which was, in
-its way, as original as his draughtsmanship, and into a writer of
-verse which had at least ingenious and original moments. He seemed
-to have read everything, and had his preferences as adroitly in
-order, as wittily in evidence, as almost any man of letters; indeed,
-he seemed to know more, and was a sounder critic, of books than of
-pictures; with perhaps a deeper feeling for music than for either. His
-conversation had a peculiar kind of brilliance different in order but
-scarcely inferior in quality to that of any other contemporary master
-of that art; a salt, whimsical dogmatism, equally full of convinced
-egoism and of imperturbable keen-sightedness. Generally choosing to
-be paradoxical; and vehement on behalf of any enthusiasm of the mind,
-he was the dupe of none of his own statements, or indeed of his own
-enthusiasms, and, really, very coldly impartial. I scarcely except
-even his own judgment of himself in spite of his petulant, amusing
-self-assertion, so full of the childishness of genius. He thought,
-and was right in thinking, very highly of himself; he admired himself
-enormously; but his intellect would never allow itself to be deceived
-even about his own accomplishments.</p>
-
-<p>This clear, unemotional intellect, emotional only in the perhaps
-highest sense, where emotion almost ceases to be recognizable, in the
-abstract, for ideas, for lines, left him with all his interests in
-life, with all his sociability, of a sort essentially very lonely. Many
-people were devoted to him, but he had, I think, scarcely a friend,
-in the fullest sense of the word; and I doubt if there were more than
-one or two people for whom he felt any real affection. In spite of
-constant ill-health he had am astonishing tranquility of nerves; and
-it was doubtless that rare quality which kept him, after all, alive so
-long. How far he had deliberately acquired command over his nerves and
-his emotions, as he deliberately acquired command over brain and hand,
-I do not know. But there it certainly was, one of the bewildering
-characteristics of so contradictory a temperament.</p>
-
-<p>One of his poses, as people say, one of those things, that is, in
-which he was most sincere, was his care in outwardly conforming to the
-conventions which make for elegance and restraint; his necessity of
-dressing well, of showing no sign of the professional artist. He had a
-great contempt for, what seemed to inferior craftsmen, inspiration, for
-what I have elsewhere called the plenary inspiration of first thoughts;
-and he hated the outward and visible signs of an inward yeastiness and
-incoherency. It amused him to denounce everything, certainly, which
-Baudelaire would have denounced; and, along with some mere <i>gaminerie</i>,
-there was a very serious and adequate theory of art at the back of all
-his destructive criticisms. It was a profound thing which he said to
-a friend of mine who asked him whether he ever saw visions: "No," he
-replied, "I do not allow myself to see them except on paper." All his
-art is in that phrase.</p>
-
-<p>And he attained, to the full, one certainly of his many desires, and
-that one, perhaps, of which he was most keenly or most continuously
-conscious: contemporary fame of a popular singer or a professional
-beauty, the fame of Yvette Guilbert or of Cléo de Mérode. And there was
-logic in his insistence on this point, in his eagerness after immediate
-and clamorous success. Others might have waited; he knew that he had
-not the time to wait. After all, posthumous fame is not a very cheering
-prospect to look forward to, on the part of those who have worked
-without recompense, if the pleasure or the relief of work is not enough
-in itself. Every artist has his own secret, beyond the obvious one, of
-why he works, it is generally some unhappiness, some dissatisfaction
-with the things about one, some too desperate or too contemptuous sense
-of the meaning of existence. At one period of his life a man works
-at his art to please a woman; then he works because he is tired of
-pleasing her. Work for the work's sake it always must be, in a profound
-sense; and, with Beardsley, not less certainly than with Blake or with
-Rosetti. But that other, that accidental, significant motive, was, with
-Beardsley, the desire to fill his few working years with the immediate
-echo of a great notoriety.</p>
-
-<p>Like most artists who have thought much of popularity he had an immense
-contempt for the public; and the desire to kick that public into
-admiration, and then to kick it for admiring the wrong thing or not
-knowing why it was admiring, led him into many of his most outrageous
-practical jokes of the pen. He was partly right and partly wrong, for
-he was indiscriminate; and to be indiscriminate is always to be partly
-right and partly wrong. The wish to <i>épater le bourgeois</i> is a natural
-one, and, though a little beside the question, does not necessarily
-lead one astray. The general public, of course, does not in the least
-know why it admires the right thing to-day though it admired the wrong
-thing yesterday. But there is such a thing as denying your Master while
-you are rebuking a servant-girl. Beardsley was without the very sense
-of respect; it was one of his limitations.</p>
-
-<p>And this limitation was an unfortunate one, for it limited his
-ambition. With the power of creating beauty, which should be pure
-beauty, he turned aside, only too often, to that lower kind of beauty
-which is the mere beauty of technique in a composition otherwise
-meaningless, trivial, or grotesque. Saying to himself, "I can do what
-I like; there is nothing I could not do if I chose to, if I chose to
-take the trouble; but why should I offer hard gold when an I.O.U. will
-be just the same? I can pay up whenever the money is really wanted," he
-allowed himself to be content with what he knew would startle, doing
-it with infinite pains, to his own mind conscientiously, but doing it
-with that lack of reverence for great work which is one of the most
-sterlizing characteristics of the present day.</p>
-
-<p>The epithet <i>fin de siècle</i> has been given, somewhat loosely, to a
-great deal of modern French art, and to art which, in one way or
-another, seems to attach itself to contemporary France. Out of the
-great art of Manet, the serious art of Degas, the exquisite art of
-Whistler, all, in such different ways, so modern, there has come into
-existence a new, very modern, very far from great or serious or really
-exquisite kind of art, which has expressed itself largely in the
-"Courrier Français," the "Gil Blas Illustré," and the posters. All this
-art may be said to be what the quite new art of the poster certainly
-is, art meant for the street, for people who are walking fast. It
-comes into competition with the newspapers, with the music-halls; half
-contemptuously, it popularises itself; and, with real qualities and a
-real measure of good intention, finds itself forced to seek for sharp,
-sudden, arresting means of expression. Instead of seeking pure beauty,
-the seriousness and self-absorption of great art, it takes, wilfully
-and for effect, that beauty which is least evident, indeed least
-genuine; nearest to ugliness in the grotesque, nearest to triviality
-in a certain elegant daintiness, nearest also to brutality and the
-spectacular vices. Art is not sought for its own sake, but the manual
-craftsman perfects himself to express a fanciful, ingenious, elaborate,
-somewhat tricky way of seeing things, which he has deliberately
-adopted. It finds its own in the eighteenth century, so that Willette
-becomes a kind of petty, witty Watteau of Montmartre; it parodies
-the art of stained glass, with Grasset and his followers; it juggles
-with iron bars and masses of shadow, like Lautrec. And, in its direct
-assault on the nerves, it pushes naughtiness to obscenity, deforms
-observation into caricature, dexterity of line and handling being
-cultivated as one cultivates a particular, deadly <i>bottle</i> in fencing.</p>
-
-<p>And this art, this art of the day and hour, competes not merely with
-the appeal and the popularity of the theatrical spectacle, but directly
-with theatrical methods, the methods of stage illusion. The art of the
-ballet counts for much, in the evolution of many favorite effects of
-contemporary drawing, and not merely because Degas has drawn dancers,
-with his reserved, essentially classical mastery of form. By its
-rapidity of flight within bounds, by its bird-like and flower-like
-caprices of color and motion, by that appeal to the imagination which
-comes from its silence (to which music is but like an accompanying
-shadow, so closely, so discreetly, does it follow the feet of the
-dancers), by its appeal to the eyes and to the senses, its adorable
-artificiality, the ballet has tempted almost every draughtsman, as
-the interiors of music-halls have also been singularly tempting, with
-their extraordinary tricks of light, their suddenness of gesture, their
-triumphant tinsel, their fantastic humanity. And pantomime, too, in the
-French and correct, rather than in the English and incorrect, sense
-of that word, has had its significant influence. In those pathetic
-gaieties of Willette, in the windy laughter of the frivolities of
-Chéret, it is the masquerade, the English clown or acrobat seen at the
-Folies-Bergère, painted people mimicking puppets, who have begotten
-this masquerading humanity of posters and illustrated papers. And the
-point of view is the point of view of Pierrot&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>
-<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"le subtil génie</span><br />
-De sa malice infinie<br />
-De poète-grimacier"&mdash;<br />
-<br />
-Verlaine's <i>Pierrot gamin</i>.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p>Pierrot is one of the types we live, or of the moment, perhaps, out
-of which we are just passing. Pierrot is passionate; but he does not
-believe in great passions. He feels himself to be sickening with a
-fever, or else perilously convalescent; for love is a disease, which he
-is too weak to resist or endure. He has worn his heart on his sleeve
-so long, that it has hardened in the cold air. He knows that his face
-is powdered, and, if he sobs, it is without tears; and it is hard to
-distinguish, under the chalk, if the grimace which twists his mouth
-awry is more laughter or mockery. He knows that he is condemned to be
-always in public, that emotion would be supremely out of keeping with
-his costume, that he must remember to be fantastic if he would not be
-merely ridiculous. And so he becomes exquisitely false, dreading above
-all things that "one touch of nature" which would ruffle his disguise,
-and leave him defenceless. Simplicity, in him, being the most laughable
-thing in the world, he becomes learned, perverse, intellectualising his
-pleasures, brutalising his intellect; his mournful contemplation of
-things becoming a kind of grotesque joy, which he expresses in the only
-symbols at his command, tracing his Giotto's O with the elegance of his
-pirouette.</p>
-
-<p>And Beardsley, with almost more than the Parisian's deference to
-Paris, and to the moment, was, more than any Parisian, this <i>Pierrot
-gamin</i>. He was more than that, but he was that: to be that was part
-of what he learnt from France. It helped him to the pose which helped
-him to reveal himself: as Burne-Jones had helped him when he did
-the illustrations to the "Morte d'Arthur," (Ill. 7-10) as Japanese
-art helped him to free himself from that influence, as Eisen and
-Saint-Aubin showed him the way to the "Rape of the Lock." (Ill. 53)
-He had that originality which surrenders to every influence, yet
-surrenders to absorb, not to be absorbed; that originality which,
-constantly shifting, is true always to its centre. Whether he learnt
-from M. Grasset or from Mr. Ricketts, from an 1830 fashion-plate,
-or from an engraved plate by Hogarth, whether the scenery of
-Arques-la-Bataille composed itself into a pattern in his mind, or,
-in the Casino at Dieppe, he made a note of the design of a looped-up
-window-blind, he was always drawing to himself, out of the order of
-art or the confusion of natural things, the thing he wanted, the thing
-he could make his own. And he found, in the French art of the moment,
-a joyous sadness, the service to God of Mephistopheles, which his own
-temperament and circumstances were waiting to suggest to him&mdash;.</p>
-
-<p>"In more ways than one do men sacrifice to the rebellious angels," says
-St. Augustine; and Beardsley's sacrifice, together with that of all
-great decadent art, the art of Rops or the art of Baudelaire, is really
-a sacrifice to the eternal beauty, and only seemingly to the powers of
-evil. And here let me say that I have no concern with what neither he
-nor I could have had absolute knowledge of, his own intention in his
-work. A man's intention, it must be remembered, from the very fact that
-it is conscious, is much less intimately himself than the sentiment
-which his work conveys to me. So large is the sub-conscious element in
-all artistic creation, that I should have doubted whether Beardsley
-himself knew what he intended to do, in this or that really significant
-drawing. Admitting that he could tell exactly what he had intended, I
-should be quite prepared to show that he had really done the very
-contrary.</p>
-
-<p>Thus when I say he was a profoundly spiritual artist, though seeming to
-care chiefly for the manual part of his work; that he expresses evil
-with an intensity which lifted it into a region almost of asceticism,
-though attempting, not seldom, little more than a joke or a caprice in
-line: and that he was above all, though almost against his own will,
-a satirist who has seen the ideal; I am putting forward no paradox,
-nothing really contradictory, but a simple analysis of the work as it
-exists.</p>
-
-<p>At times he attains pure beauty, has the unimpaired vision; in the
-best of the "Salomé" (Ills. 15-29) designs here and there afterwards.
-From the first it is a diabolic beauty, but it is not yet divided
-against itself. The consciousness of sin is always there, but it is
-sin first transfigured by beauty, and then disclosed by beauty; sin,
-conscious of itself, of its inability to escape itself, and showing in
-its ugliness the law it has broken. His world is a world of phantoms,
-in which the desire of the perfecting of mortal sensations, a desire
-of infinity, has over-passed mortal limits, and poised them, so faint,
-so quivering, so passionate for flight, in a hopeless and strenuous
-immobility. They have the sensitiveness of the spirit, and that bodily
-sensitiveness which wastes their veins and imprisons them in the
-attitude of their luxurious meditation. They are too thoughtful to
-be ever really simple, or really absorbed by either flesh or spirit.
-They have nothing of what is "healthy" or merely "animal" in their
-downward course towards repentance; no overwhelming passion hurries
-them beyond themselves; they do not capitulate to an open assault of
-the enemy of souls. It is the soul in them that sins, sorrowfully,
-without reluctance, inevitably. Their bodies are faint and eager with
-wantonness; they desire more pleasure than there is in the world,
-fiercer and more exquisite pains, a more intolerable suspense. They
-have put off the common burdens of humanity, and put on that loneliness
-which is the rest of saints and the unrest of those who have sinned
-with the intellect. They are a little lower than the angels, and they
-walk between these and the fallen angels, without part or lot in the
-world.</p>
-
-<p>Here, then, we have a sort of abstract spiritual corruption, revealed
-in beautiful form; sin transfigured by beauty. And here, even if we
-go no further, is an art intensely spiritual, an art in which evil
-purifies itself by its own intensity, and the beauty which transfigures
-it. The one thing in the world which is without hope is that mediocrity
-which is the sluggish content of inert matter. Better be vividly
-awake to evil than, in mere somnolence, close the very issues and
-approaches of good and evil. For evil itself, carried to the point of
-a perverse ecstasy, becomes a kind of good, by means of that energy
-which, otherwise directed, is virtue; and which can never, no matter
-how its course may be changed, fail to retain something of its original
-efficacy. The devil is nearer to God, by the whole height from which
-he fell, than the average man who has not recognised his own need to
-rejoice or to repent. And so a profound spiritual corruption, instead
-of being a more "immortal" thing than the gross and pestiferous
-humanity of Hogarth or of Rowlandson, is more nearly, in the final
-and abstract sense, moral, for it is the triumph of the spirit over
-the flesh, to no matter what end. It is a form of divine possession,
-by which the inactive and materialising soul is set in fiery motion,
-lured from the ground, into at least a certain high liberty. And
-so we find evil justified of itself, and an art consecrated to the
-revelation of evil equally justified; its final justification being
-that declared by Plotinus, in his treatise "On the Nature of Good
-and Evil." "But evil is permitted to remain by itself alone on account
-of the superior power and nature of good; because it appears from
-necessity everywhere comprehended and bound, in beautiful bands, like
-men fettered with golden chains, lest it should be produced openly to
-the views of divinity, or lest mankind should always behold its horrid
-shape when perfectly naked; and such is the supervening power of good,
-that whenever a glimpse of perfect evil is obtained we are immediately
-recalled to the memory of good by the image of the beautiful with which
-evil is invested."</p>
-
-<p>In those drawings of Beardsley which are grotesque rather than
-beautiful, in which now all the beauty takes refuge, is itself a moral
-judgment. Look at that drawing called "The Scarlet Pastorale."<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> In
-front, a bloated harlequin struts close to the footlights, outside the
-play, on which he turns his back; beyond, sacramental candles have been
-lighted, and are guttering down in solitude, under an unseen wind. And
-between, on the sheer darkness of the stage, a bald and plumed Pierrot,
-holding in his vast, collapsing paunch with a mere rope of roses, shows
-the cloven foot, while Pierrette points at him in screaming horror,
-and the fat dancer turns on her toes indifferently. Need we go further
-to show how much more than Gautier's meaning lies in the old paradox
-of "Mademoiselle de Maupin," that "perfection of line is virtue?" That
-line which rounds the deformity of the cloven-footed sin, the line
-itself, is at once the revelation and the condemnation of vice, for it
-is part of that artistic logic which is morality.</p>
-
-<p>Beardsley is the satirist of an age without convictions, and he can
-but paint hell as Baudelaire did, without pointing for contrast to any
-contemporary paradise. He employs the same rhetoric as Baudelaire,
-a method of emphasis which it is uncritical to think insecure. In
-that terrible annunciation of evil which he called "The Mysterious
-Rose-Garden," the lantern-bearing angel with winged sandals whispers,
-from among the falling roses, tidings of more than "pleasant sins."
-The leering dwarfs, the "monkeys," by which the mystics symbolised
-the earthlier vices; those immense bodies swollen with the lees of
-pleasure, and those cloaked and masked desires shuddering in gardens
-and smiling ambiguously at interminable toilets; are part of a
-symbolism which loses nothing by lack of emphasis. And the peculiar
-efficacy of this satire is that it is so much the satire of desire
-returning upon itself, the mockery of desire enjoyed, the mockery of
-desire denied. It is because he loves beauty that beauty's degradation
-obsesses him; it is because he is supremely conscious of virtue that
-vice has power to lay hold upon him. And, unlike those other acceptable
-satirists of our day, with whom satire exhausts itself in the rebuke
-of a drunkard leaning against a lamp-post, or a lady paying the wrong
-compliment in a drawing-room, he is the satirist of essential things;
-it is always the soul, and not the body's discontent only, which cries
-out of these insatiable eyes, that have looked on all their lusts,
-and out of these bitter mouths, that have eaten the dust of all their
-sweetness, and out of these hands, that have laboured delicately for
-nothing, and out of these feet, that have run after vanities. They
-are so sorrowful because they have seen beauty, and because they have
-departed from the line of beauty.</p>
-
-<p>And after all, the secret of Beardsley is there; in the line itself
-rather than in anything, intellectually realised, which the line is
-intended to express. With Beardsley everything was a question of form:
-his interest in his work began when the paper was before him and the
-pen in his hand. And so, in one sense, he may be said never to have
-known what he wanted to do, while, in another, he knew very precisely
-indeed. He was ready to do, within certain limits, almost anything you
-suggested to him; as, when left to himself, he was content to follow
-the caprice of the moment. What he was sure of was his power of doing
-exactly what he proposed to himself to do: the thing itself might be
-"Salomé" or "Belinda," "Ali Baba" or "Réjane," the "Morte d'Arthur" or
-the "Rheingold" or the "Liaisons Dangereuses;" the design might be for
-an edition of a classic or for the cover of a catalogue of second-hand
-books. And the design might seem to have no relation with the title of
-its subject, and, indeed, might have none: its relation was of line to
-line within the limits of its own border, and to nothing else in the
-world. Thus he could change his whole manner of working five or six
-times over in the course of as many years, seem to employ himself much
-of the time on trivial subjects, and yet retain, almost unimpaired,
-an originality which consisted in the extreme beauty and the absolute
-certainty of design.</p>
-
-<p>It was a common error, at one time, to say that Beardsley could not
-draw. He certainly did not draw the human body with any attempt at
-rendering its own lines, taken by themselves; indeed, one of his
-latest drawings, an initial letter to "Volpone," is almost the first
-in which he has drawn a nude figure realistically. But he could draw,
-with extraordinary skill, in what is after all the essential way: he
-could make a line do what he wanted it to do, express the conception
-of form which it was his intention to express; and this is what the
-conventional draughtsman, Bouguereau, for instance, cannot do. The
-conventional draughtsman, any Academy student, will draw a line which
-shows quite accurately the curve of a human body, but all his science
-of drawing will not make you feel that line, will not make that line
-pathetic, as in the little, drooping body which a satyr and a Pierrot
-are laying in a puff-powder coffin, in the tail-piece to "Salomé."
-(Ill. 28.)</p>
-
-<p>And then, it must never be forgotten, Beardsley was a decorative
-artist, and not anything else. From almost the very first he accepted
-convention; he set himself to see things as pattern. Taking freely
-all that the Japanese could give him, that release from the bondage
-of what we call real things, which comes to one man from an intense
-spirituality, to another from a consciousness of material form so
-intense that it becomes abstract, he made the world over again in his
-head, as if it existed only when it was thus re-made, and not even
-then, until it had been set down in black line on a white surface,
-in white line on a black surface. Working, as the decorative artist
-must work, in symbols almost as arbitrary, almost as fixed, as the
-squares of a chess-board, he swept together into his pattern all the
-incongruous things in the world, weaving them into congruity by his
-pattern. Using the puff-box, the toilet-table, the ostrich-feather hat,
-with a full consciousness of their suggestive quality in a drawing of
-archaic times, a drawing purposely fantastic, he put these things to
-beautiful uses, because he liked their forms, and because his space of
-white or black seemed to require some such arrangement of lines. They
-were the minims and crotchets by which he wrote down his music; they
-made the music, but they were not the music.</p>
-
-<p>In the "Salomé" (Ills. 15-29) drawings, in most of the "Yellow Book"
-(Ills. 33, 34, 35, 37, 40, 41) drawings, we see Beardsley under this
-mainly Japanese influence; with, now and later, in his less serious
-work the but half-admitted influence of what was most actual, perhaps
-most temporary, in the French art of the day. Pierrot gamin, in
-"Salomé" itself, alternates, in such irreverences as the design of
-"The Black Cape," (Ill. 17) with the creator of the noble line, in the
-austere and terrible design of "The Climax," (Ill. 24) the ornate and
-vehement design of "The Peacock Skirt." (Ill. 16.) Here we get pure
-outline, as in the frontispiece; a mysterious intricacy, as in the
-border of the title-page and of the table of contents; a paradoxical
-beauty of mere wilfulness, but a wilfulness which has its meaning,
-its excuse, its pictorial justification, as in "The Toilette." (Ill.
-22). The "Yellow Book" and the first drawings for the "Savoy," (Ills.
-54-57) a new influence has come into the work, the influence of the
-French eighteenth century. This influence, artificial as it is, draws
-him nearer, though somewhat unquietly nearer, to nature. Drawings like
-"The Fruit Bearers," in the first number of the "Savoy," with its solid
-and elaborate richness of ornament, or "The Coiffing," in the third
-number, with its delicate and elaborate grace, its witty concentration
-of line; drawings like the illustrations to the "Rape of the Lock,"
-(Ill. 53) have, with less extravagance, and also a less strenuous
-intellectual effort, a new mastery of elegant form, not too far removed
-from nature while still subordinated to the effect of decoration, to
-the instinct of line. In the illustrations to Ernest Dowson's "Pierrot
-of the Minute," (Ills. 45-47) we have a more deliberate surrender,
-for the moment, to Eisen and Saint-Aubin, as yet another manner
-is seen working itself out. The illustrations to "Mademoiselle de
-Maupin," seemed to me, when I first saw them, with the exception of
-one extremely beautiful design in colour, to show a certain falling
-off in power, an actual weakness in the handling of the pen. But, in
-their not quite successful feeling after natural form, they did but
-represent, as I afterwards found, the moment of transition to what must
-now remain for us, and may well remain, Beardsley's latest manner. The
-four initial letters to "Volpone," the last of which was finished not
-more than three weeks before his death, have a new quality both of hand
-and of mind. They are done in pencil, and they lose, as such drawings
-are bound to lose, very greatly in the reduced reproduction. But, in
-the original, they are certainly, in sheer technical skill, equal
-to anything he had ever done, and they bring at the last, and with
-complete success, nature itself into the pattern. And here, under some
-solemn influence, the broken line of beauty has reunited; "the care is
-over," and the trouble has gone out of this no less fantastic world, in
-which Pan still smiles from his terminal column among the trees, but
-without the old malice. Human and animal form reassert themselves, with
-a new dignity, under this new respect for their capabilities. Beardsley
-has accepted the convention of nature itself, turning it to his own
-uses, extracting from it his own symbols, but no longer rejecting it
-for a convention entirely of his own making. And thus in his last work,
-done under the very shadow of death, we find new possibilities for an
-art, conceived as pure line, conducted through mere pattern, which,
-after many hesitations, has resolved finally upon the great compromise,
-that compromise which the greatest artists have made, between the
-mind's outline and the outline of visible things.</p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> This drawing is not reproduced in this volume.</p></div>
-
-
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-<h2><a name="ILLUSTRATIONS_BY_AUBREY_BEARDSLEY" id="ILLUSTRATIONS_BY_AUBREY_BEARDSLEY">ILLUSTRATIONS BY AUBREY BEARDSLEY</a></h2>
-
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px;">
-<a id="art002"></a>
-<img src="images/art_002.jpg" width="450" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">THE LITANY OF MARY MAGDALEN</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art003"></a>
-<img src="images/art_003.jpg" width="450" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">A PORTRAIT OF AUBREY BEARDSLEY, BY HIMSELF</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art004"></a>
-<img src="images/art_004.jpg" width="400" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">INCIPIT VITA NOVA</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 425px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art005"></a>
-<img src="images/art_005.jpg" width="425" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">SANDRO BOTTICELLI</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 550px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art006"></a>
-<img src="images/art_006.jpg" width="550" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">SIEGFRIED<br />From "The Studio"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art007"></a>
-<img src="images/art_007.jpg" width="500" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">MERLIN<br />From "Le morte d'Arthur"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art008"></a>
-<img src="images/art_008.jpg" width="400" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">VIGNETTE<br />From "Le morte d'Arthur"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 650px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art009"></a>
-<img src="images/art_009.jpg" width="650" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">"LA BEALE ISOUD AT JOYOUS GARDEN"<br />From "Le morte d'Arthur"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 550px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art010"></a>
-<img src="images/art_010.jpg" width="550" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">HOW QUEEN GUINEVER MADE HER A NUN<br />From "Le morte d'Arthur"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 550px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art011"></a>
-<img src="images/art_011.jpg" width="550" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">"OF A NEOPHYTE? AND HOW THE BLACK ART WAS REVEALED UNTO HIM."</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 550px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<img src="images/art_012.jpg" width="550" alt="" />
-<a id="art012"></a>
-<p class="cap">"THE KISS OF JUDAS"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art013"></a>
-<img src="images/art_013.jpg" width="500" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">"A SUGGESTED REFORM IN BALLET COSTUME"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art014"></a>
-<img src="images/art_014.jpg" width="450" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">BARON VERDIGRIS</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 550px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art015"></a>
-<img src="images/art_015.jpg" width="550" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">THE WOMAN IN THE MOON<br />"From Salomé"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 550px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art016"></a>
-<img src="images/art_016.jpg" width="550" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">"THE PEACOCK SKIRT"<br />"From Salomé"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art017"></a>
-<img src="images/art_017.jpg" alt=" " width="525" />
-<p class="cap">THE BLACK CAPE<br />"From Salomé"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art018"></a>
-<img src="images/art_018.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">THE PLATONIC LAMENT<br />"From Salomé"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art019"></a>
-<img src="images/art_019.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">ENTER HERODIAS<br />"From Salomé"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art020"></a>
-<img src="images/art_020.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">THE EYES OF HEROD<br />"From Salomé"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art021"></a>
-<img src="images/art_021.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">THE STOMACH DANCE<br />"From Salomé"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art022"></a>
-<img src="images/art_022.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">THE TOILETTE OF SALOMÉ<br />"From Salomé"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art023"></a>
-<img src="images/art_023.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">THE DANCER'S REWARD<br />"From Salomé"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art024"></a>
-<img src="images/art_024.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">THE CLIMAX<br />"From Salomé"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art025"></a>
-<img src="images/art_025.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">THE TOILETTE OF SALOMÉ, THE FIRST DRAWING<br />"From Salomé"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art026"></a>
-<img src="images/art_026.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">JOHN AND SALOMÉ<br />"From Salomé"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art027"></a>
-<img src="images/art_027.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">SALOMÉ ON SETTEE<br />"From Salomé"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
-<a id="art028"></a>
-<img src="images/art_028.jpg" width="500" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">DESIGN FOR TAILPIECE<br />"From Salomé"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art029"></a>
-<img src="images/art_029.jpg" width="450" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">DESIGN FOR SALOMÉ<br />"From The Studio"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art030"></a>
-<img src="images/art_030.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">"DESIGN FOR THE COVER OF "THE YELLOW BOOK"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art031"></a>
-<img src="images/art_031.jpg" width="400" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">NIGHTPIECE</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width:475px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art032"></a>
-<img src="images/art_032.jpg" width="475" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">PORTRAIT OF MRS. PATRICK CAMPBELL</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art033"></a>
-<img src="images/art_033.jpg" width="500" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">TITLE-PAGE ORNAMENT FOR "THE YELLOW-BOOK", VOLUME II</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art034"></a>
-<img src="images/art_034.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">COMEDY BALLET OF MARIONETTES I</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art035"></a>
-<img src="images/art_035.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">COMEDY BALLET OF MARIONETTES II</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art036"></a>
-<img src="images/art_036.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">COMEDY BALLET OF MARIONETTES III</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art037"></a>
-<img src="images/art_037.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">GARÇONS DE CAFÉ</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art038"></a>
-<img src="images/art_038.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">THE SLIPPERS OF CINDERELLA</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art039"></a>
-<img src="images/art_039.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">PORTRAIT OF MANTEGNA<br /> From "The Yellow Book," Vol. III.</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art040"></a>
-<img src="images/art_040.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">THE WAGNERITES<br />From "The Yellow Book," Vol. III.</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art041"></a>
-<img src="images/art_041.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">LA DAME AUX CAMÉLIAS<br />From "The Yellow Book," Vol. III.</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art042"></a>
-<img src="images/art_042.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">MADAME RÉJANE</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art043"></a>
-<img src="images/art_043.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">PORTRAIT OF BALZAC</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art044"></a>
-<img src="images/art_044.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">DESIGN FOR FRONTISPIECE TO "AN EVIL MOTHERHOOD"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art045"></a>
-<img src="images/art_045.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">DESIGN FOR FRONT COVER OF "PIERROT"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 650px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art046"></a>
-<img src="images/art_046.jpg" width="650" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">DESIGN FOR END-PAPER OF "PIERROT"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 650px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art047"></a>
-<img src="images/art_047.jpg" width="650" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">DESIGN FOR END-PAPER OF "PIERROT"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art048"></a>
-<img src="images/art_048.jpg" width="600" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">LYSISTRATA</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art049"></a>
-<img src="images/art_049.jpg" width="450" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">AN ATHENIAN WOMAN</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art050"></a>
-<img src="images/art_050.jpg" width="450" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">MYRRHINA</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art051"></a>
-<img src="images/art_051.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">THE DREAM</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art052"></a>
-<img src="images/art_052.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">THE BARON'S PRAYER</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art053"></a>
-<img src="images/art_053.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">THE RAPE OF THE LOCK</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art054"></a>
-<img src="images/art_054.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">DESIGN FOR THE PROSPECTUS OF "THE SAVOY"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art055"></a>
-<img src="images/art_055.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">ANOTHER DESIGN FOR THE PROSPECTUS OF "THE SAVOY"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art056"></a>
-<img src="images/art_056.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">COVER DESIGN<br />From "The Savoy" N° 1.</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art057"></a>
-<img src="images/art_057.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">CONTENTS PAGE<br />From "The Savoy" N° 1.</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art058"></a>
-<img src="images/art_058.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">THE ABBÉ<br />From "Under the Hill"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art059"></a>
-<img src="images/art_059.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">THE FOURTH TABLEAU OF "DAS RHEINGOLD"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art060"></a>
-<img src="images/art_060.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">ERDA<br />To illustrate "Das Rheingold".</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 550px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art061"></a>
-<img src="images/art_061.jpg" width="550" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">FLOSSHILDE<br />To illustrate "Das Rheingold"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art062"></a>
-<img src="images/art_062.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">THE DEATH OF PIERROT</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 475px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art063"></a>
-<img src="images/art_063.jpg" width="475" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">AVE ATQUE VALE: CATULLUS, CARMEN, CI.</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art064"></a>
-<img src="images/art_064.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">AUBREY BEARDSLEY'S BOOKPLATE</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="full" />
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 50171 ***</div>
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-</html>
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-Project Gutenberg's The Art of Aubrey Beardsley, by Aubrey Beardsley
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-
-
-Title: The Art of Aubrey Beardsley
-
-Author: Aubrey Beardsley
-
-Commentator: Arthur Symons
-
-Release Date: October 10, 2015 [EBook #50171]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ART OF AUBREY BEARDSLEY ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org
-(Images generously made available by the Internet Archive.)
-
-
-
-
-
-THE ART OF
-
-AUBREY BEARDSLEY
-
-Introduction by ARTHUR SYMONS
-
-BONI AND LIVERIGHT, INC.
-
-PUBLISHERS -- NEW YORK
-
-1918
-
-
-[Illustration: Aubrey Beardsley]
-
-CONTENTS
-
-
-Preface
-
-Aubrey Beardsley by Arthur Symons
-
-
-    ILLUSTRATIONS
-
-    1. Portrait of Aubrey Beardsley.
-    2. The Litany of Mary Magdalen.
-    3. A Portrait of Aubrey Beardsley. By Himself.
-    4. Incipit Vita Nova.
-    5. Sandro Botticelli.
-    6. "Siegfried." From "The Studio."
-    7. Merlin. From "Le Morte d'Arthur."
-    8. Vignette. From "Le Morte d'Arthur"
-    9. La Beale Isoud at Joyous Gard. From "Le Morte d'Arthur."
-    10. How Queen Guenever Made Her a Nun. From "Le Morte d'Arthur."
-    11. "Of a Neophyte and How the Black Art Was Revealed Unto Him."
-    12. The Kiss of Judas.
-    13. A Suggested Reform in Ballet Costume.
-    14. Baron Verdigris.
-    15. The Woman in the Moon.
-    16. The Peacock Skirt.
-    17. The Black Cape.
-    18. The Platonic Lament.
-    19. Enter Herodias.
-    20. The Eyes of Herod.
-    21. The Stomach Dance.
-    22. The Toilette of Salomé.
-    23. The Dancer's Reward.
-    24. The Climax.
-    25. The Toilette of Salomé. First Drawing.
-    26. John and Salomé.
-    27. Salomé on Settle.
-    28. Design for Tailpiece.
-    29. Design for "Salomé." From "The Studio."
-    30. Design for the Cover of "The Yellow Book" Prospectus.
-    31. Night Piece.
-    32. Portrait of Mrs. Patrick Campbell.
-    33. Title Page Ornament for "The Yellow Book."
-    34. Comedy Ballet of Marionettes, I. From "The Yellow Book." Vol. II.
-    35. Comedy Ballet of Marionettes, II. From "The Yellow Book." Vol. II.
-    36. Comedy Ballet of Marionettes, III.
-    37. Garçons de Café. From "The Yellow Book." Vol. II.
-    38. The Slippers of Cinderella.
-    39. Portrait of Mantegna. From "The Yellow Book." Vol. III.
-    40. The Wagnerites. From "The Yellow Book." Vol. III.
-    41. La Dame Aux Camélias. From "The Yellow Book." Vol. III.
-    42. Madame Réjane.
-    43. Portrait of Balzac.
-    44. Design for Frontispiece to "An Evil Motherhood."
-    45. Design for Front Cover of "Pierrot."
-    46. Design for End Paper of "Pierrot."
-    47. Design for End Paper of "Pierrot."
-    48. Lysistrata.
-    49. An Athenian Woman.
-    50. Myrrhina.
-    51. The Dream.
-    52. The Baron's Prayer.
-    53. The Rape of the Lock.
-    54. Design for the Prospectus of "The Savoy."
-    55. Another Design for the Prospectus of "The Savoy."
-    56. Cover Design. From "The Savoy" No. 1.
-    57. Contents Page. From "The Savoy" No. 1.
-    58. The Abbé. From "Under the Hill."
-    59. The Fourth Tableau of "Das Rheingold."
-    60. Erda. To illustrate "Das Rheingold."
-    61. Flosshilde. To illustrate "Das Rheingold."
-    62. The Death of Pierrot.
-    63. Ave Atque Vale: Catullus, Carmen, Cl.
-    64. Aubrey Beardsley's Book-Plate.
-
-
-
-
-AUBREY BEARDSLEY
-
-AN ESSAY WITH A PREFACE
-
-BY
-
-ARTHUR SYMONS
-
-
-
-
-PREFACE
-
-
-It was in the summer of 1895 that I first met Aubrey Beardsley. A
-publisher had asked me to form and edit a new kind of magazine,
-which was to appeal to the public equally in its letterpress and its
-illustrations: need I say that I am defining the "Savoy"? It was,
-I admit, to have been something of a rival to the "Yellow Book,"
-which had by that time ceased to mark a movement, and had come to be
-little more than a publisher's magazine. I forget exactly when the
-expulsion of Beardsley from the "Yellow Book" had occurred; it had
-been sufficiently recent, at all events, to make Beardsley singularly
-ready to fall in with my project when I went to him and asked him to
-devote himself to illustrating my quarterly. He was supposed, just
-then, to be dying; and as I entered the room, and saw him lying out
-on a couch, horribly white, I wondered if I had come too late. He was
-full of ideas, full of enthusiasm, and I think it was then that he
-suggested the name "Savoy," finally adopted after endless changes and
-uncertainties.
-
-A little later we met again at Dieppe, where for a month I saw him
-daily. It was at Dieppe that the "Savoy" was really planned, and it
-was in the cafe which Mr. Sickert has so often painted that I wrote
-the slightly pettish and defiant "Editorial Note," which made so many
-enemies for the first number. Dieppe just then was a meeting-place for
-the younger generation; some of us spent the whole summer there, lazily
-but profitably; others came and went. Beardsley at that time imagined
-himself to be unable to draw anywhere but in London. He made one or
-two faint attempts, and even prepared a canvas for a picture which was
-never painted, in the hospitable studio in which M. Jacques Blanche
-painted the admirable portrait reproduced in the frontispiece. But he
-found many subjects, some of which he afterwards worked out, in the
-expressive opportunities of the Casino and the beach, lie never walked;
-I never saw him look at the sea; but at night he was almost always to
-be seen watching the gamblers at _petits chevaux_, studying them with a
-sort of hypnotised attention for that picture of "_The Little Horses_,"
-which was never done. He liked the large, deserted rooms, at hours when
-no one was there; the sense of frivolous things caught at a moment of
-suspended life, _en deshabillé_. He would glance occasionally, but
-with more impatience, at the dances, especially the children's dances,
-in the concert room; but he rarely missed a concert, and would glide
-in every afternoon, and sit on the high benches at the side, always
-carrying his large, gilt-leather portfolio with the magnificent, old,
-red-lined folio paper, which he would often open, to write some lines
-in pencil. He was at work then, with an almost pathetic tenacity, at
-his story, never to be finished, the story which never could have been
-finished, "_Under the Hill_," a new version, a parody (like Laforgue's
-parodies, but how unlike them, or anything!) of the story of Venus
-and Tannhäuser. Most of it was done at these concerts, and in the
-little, close writing-room, where visitors sat writing letters. The
-fragment published in the first two numbers of the "_Savoy_" had passed
-through many stages before it found its way there, and would have
-passed through more if it had ever been carried further. Tannhäuser,
-not quite willingly, had put on Abbé's disguise, and there were other
-unwilling disguises in those brilliant, disconnected, fantastic pages,
-in which every sentence was meditated over, written for its own sake,
-and left to find its way in its own paragraph. It could never have
-been finished, for it had never really been begun; but what undoubted,
-singular, literary ability there is in it, all the same!
-
-I think Beardsley would rather have been a great writer than a great
-artist; and I remember, on one occasion, when he had to fill up a
-form of admission to some library to which I was introducing him, his
-insistence on describing himself as "man of letters." At one time
-he was going to write an essay on "_Les Liaisons Dangereuses_," at
-another he had planned a book on Rousseau. But his plans for writing
-changed even more quickly than his plans for doing drawings, and with
-less profitable results in the meantime. He has left no prose except
-that fragment of a story; and in verse only the three pieces published
-in the "_Savoy_." Here, too, he was terribly anxious to excel; and his
-patience over a medium so unfamiliar, and hence so difficult, to him
-as verse, was infinite. We spent two whole days on the grassy ramparts
-of the old castle at Arques-la-Bataille, near Dieppe; I working at
-something or other in one part, he working at "_The Three Musicians_"
-in another. The eight stanzas of that amusing piece of verse are
-really, in their own way, a _tour de force_; by sheer power of will, by
-deliberately saying to himself, "I will write a poem," and by working
-with such strenuous application that at last a certain result, the kind
-of result he had willed, did really come about, he succeeded in doing
-what he had certainly no natural aptitude for doing. How far was that
-more genuine aspect of his genius also an "infinite capacity for taking
-pains?"
-
-The republication by Mr. Lane, the publisher of the "_Yellow Book_,"
-of Beardsley's contributions in prose and verse to the "_Savoy_," its
-"rival," as Mr. Lane correctly calls it, with the illustrations which
-there accompanied them, reopens a little, busy chapter in contemporary
-history. It is the history of yesterday, and it seems already at this
-distance of half a century. Then, what brave petulant outbursts of
-poets and artists, what comic rivalries and reluctances of publishers,
-what droll conflicts of art and morality, what thunders of the trumpets
-of the press! The press is silent now, or admiring; the publishers have
-changed places, and all rivalries are handsomely buried, with laudatory
-inscriptions on their tombstones. The situation has its irony, which
-would have appealed most to the actor most conspicuously absent from
-the scene.
-
-Beardsley was very anxious to be a writer, and, though in his verse
-there was no merit except that of a thing done to order, to one's
-own order, and done without a flaw in the process, there was, in his
-prose, a much finer quality, and his fragment of an unachieved and
-unplanned romance has a savour of its own. It is the work, not of a
-craftsman, but of an amateur, and in this it may be compared with the
-prose of Whistler, so great an artist in his own art and so brilliant
-an amateur in the art of literature. Beardsley too was something of a
-wit, and in his prose one sees hard intellect, untinged with sentiment,
-employed on the work of fancy. He wrote and he saw, unimaginatively,
-and without passion, but with a fierce sensitive precision; and he saw
-by preference things elaborately perverse, full of fantastic detail,
-unlikely and possible things, brought together from the four corners
-of the universe. All those descriptions in "_Under the Hill_" are
-the equivalent of his drawings, and they are of especial interest in
-showing how definitely he saw things, and with what calm minuteness
-he could translate what seemed a feverish drawing into oddly rational
-words. Listen, for instance, to this garden-picture: "In the middle
-was a huge bronze fountain with three basins. From the first rose a
-many-breasted dragon and four little loves mounted upon swans, and
-each love was furnished with a bow and arrow. Two of them that faced
-the monster seemed to recoil in fear, two that were behind made bold
-enough to aim their shafts at him. From the verge of the second sprang
-a circle of slim golden columns that supported silver doves with
-tails and wings spread out. The third, held by a group of grotesquely
-attenuated satyrs, is centred with a thin pipe hung with masks and
-roses and capped with children's heads." The picture was never drawn,
-but does it want more than the drawing?
-
-The prose of "_Under the Hill_" does not arrive at being really good
-prose, but it has felicities that astonish, those felicities by which
-the amateur astonishes the craftsman. The imaginary dedication is the
-best, the most sustained, piece of writing in it, but there is wit
-everywhere, subtly intermingled with fancy, and there are touches of
-color such as this: "Huge moths, so richly winged that they must have
-banqueted upon tapestries and royal stuffs, slept on the pillars that
-flanked either side of the gateway, and the eyes of all the moths
-remained open and were burning and bursting with a mesh of veins."
-Here and there is a thought or a mental sensation like that of "the
-irritation of loveliness that can never be entirely comprehended, or
-ever enjoyed to the utmost." There are many affectations, some copied
-from Oscar Wilde, others personal enough, such as the use of French
-words instead of English ones: "chevelure" for hair, and "pantoufles"
-for slippers. I do not think that Beardsley finally found a place for
-the word which he had adapted from the French, "papillions," instead of
-"papillons" or butterflies; it would have come amusingly, and it was
-one of his pet words. But his whole conception of writing was that of a
-game with words; some obsolete game with a quaint name, like that other
-favorite word of his, "spellicans," for which he did find a place in
-the story.
-
-Taken literally, this fragment is hardly more than a piece of nonsense,
-and was hardly meant to be more than that. Yet, beyond the curiosity
-and ingenuity of the writing, how much there is of real skill in the
-evocation of a certain impossible but quite credible atmosphere! Its
-icy artificiality is indeed one of its qualities, and produces, by
-mere negation, an emotional effect. Beardsley did not believe in his
-own enchantments, was never haunted by his own terrors, and, in his
-queer sympathy and familiarity with evil, had none of the ardors of a
-lost soul. In the place of Faust he would have kept the devil at his
-due distance by a polite incredulity, openly expressed, as to the very
-existence of his interlocutor.
-
-It was on the balcony of the Hotel Henri IV, at Arques, one of those
-September evenings, that I had the only quite serious, almost solemn,
-conversation I ever had with Beardsley. Not long before we had gone
-together to visit Alexandre Dumas fils at Puy, and it was from
-talking of that thoughtful, but entirely, Parisian writer, and his
-touching, in its unreal way so real, "Dame aux Camélias" (the novel,
-not the play), which Beardsley admired so much, that we passed into
-an unexpectedly intimate mood of speculation. Those stars up yonder,
-whether they were really the imprisoning worlds of other creatures like
-ourselves; the strange ways by which the soul might have come and must
-certainly go; death, and the future: it was such things that I found
-him speaking, for once without mockery. And he told me then a singular
-dream or vision which he had had when a child, waking up at night in
-the moonlight and seeing a great crucifix, with a bleeding Christ,
-falling off the wall, where certainly there was not, and had never
-been, any crucifix. It is only by remembering that one conversation,
-that vision, the tone of awe with which he told it, that I can, with a
-great effort, imagine to myself the Beardsley whom I knew with his so
-positive intelligence, his imaginative sight of the very spirit of man
-as a thing of definite outline, transformed finally into the Beardsley
-who died in the peace of the last sacraments of the Church, holding the
-rosary between his fingers.
-
-And yet, if you read carefully the book of letters to an unnamed
-friend, which has been published six years after his death, it will
-be seen that here too, as always, we are in the presence of a real
-thing. In these naked letters we see a man die. And the man dies inch
-by inch, like one who slips inch by inch over a precipice, and knows
-that the grasses at which his fingers tear, clutching their feeble
-roots, are but delaying him for so many instants, and that he must
-soon fall. We see a fine, clear-sighted intellect set on one problem:
-how to get well: then, how to get a little better; and then, how not
-to get worse. He records the weather of each day, and each symptom of
-his disease; with a desperate calmness, which but rarely deserts or
-betrays him. To-day he feels better and can read Laclos; to-morrow he
-is not so well, and he must hear no music. He has pious books and pious
-friends for the days when he is driven back upon himself, and must turn
-aside his attention from suffering which brings despair. Nothing exists
-any longer, outside himself; and there may be safety somewhere, in a
-"preservative girdle" or in a friend's prayer. He asks for both. Both
-are to keep him alive. He meets at Mentone someone who seems worse than
-himself, and who yet "lives on and does things. My spirits have gone
-up immensely since I have known him." A change of sky, the recurrence
-of a symptom: "to-day, alas, there is a downpour and I am miserably
-depressed." He reads S. Alphonsus Liguori, and it is "mere physical
-exhaustion more than hardness of heart that leaves me so apathetic
-and uninterested." He clings to religion as to his friend, thinking
-that it may help him to keep himself in life. He trains himself to be
-gentle, to hope little, to attack the sources of health stealthily. A
-"wonderful stretch of good health," a few whole days of it, makes him
-"tremble at moments." "Don't think me foolish to haggle about a few
-months," he writes, when he is hoping, all the time, that "the end is
-less near than it seems." He is received into the Church, makes his
-first confession, makes his first communion. It seems to him that each
-is a new clutch upon the roots of the grasses.
-
-The whole book is a study in fear, and by its side everything else that
-has been done, imaginatively or directly, on that fierce passion, seems
-mere oratory or a talking beside the question. Here Beardsley is, as
-he is in his drawings, close, absorbed, limited, and unflinching. That
-he should be so honest with his fear; that he should sit down before
-its face and study it feature by feature; that he should never turn
-aside his eyes for more than an instant, make no attempt to escape, but
-sit at home with it, travel with it, see it in his mirror, taste it
-with the sacrament: that is the marvellous thing, and the sign of his
-fundamental sincerity in life and art.
-
-
-
-
-AUBREY BEARDSLEY
-
-
-_Anima naturaliter pagana_, Aubrey Beardsley ended a long career,
-at the age of twenty-six, in the arms of the Church. No artist of
-our time, none certainly whose work has been in black and white, has
-reached a more universal, or a more contested fame; none has formed
-himself, out of such alien elements, a more personal originality of
-manner; none has had so wide an influence on contemporary art. He
-had the fatal speed of those who are to die young; that disquieting
-completeness and extent of knowledge, that absorption of a lifetime
-in an hour, which we find in those who hasten to have done their
-work before noon, knowing that they will not see the evening. He had
-played the piano in drawing-rooms as an infant prodigy, before, I
-suppose, he had ever drawn a line: famous at twenty as a draughtsman,
-he found time, in those incredibly busy years which remained to him,
-to deliberately train himself into a writer of prose which was, in
-its way, as original as his draughtsmanship, and into a writer of
-verse which had at least ingenious and original moments. He seemed
-to have read everything, and had his preferences as adroitly in
-order, as wittily in evidence, as almost any man of letters; indeed,
-he seemed to know more, and was a sounder critic, of books than of
-pictures; with perhaps a deeper feeling for music than for either. His
-conversation had a peculiar kind of brilliance different in order but
-scarcely inferior in quality to that of any other contemporary master
-of that art; a salt, whimsical dogmatism, equally full of convinced
-egoism and of imperturbable keen-sightedness. Generally choosing to
-be paradoxical; and vehement on behalf of any enthusiasm of the mind,
-he was the dupe of none of his own statements, or indeed of his own
-enthusiasms, and, really, very coldly impartial. I scarcely except
-even his own judgment of himself in spite of his petulant, amusing
-self-assertion, so full of the childishness of genius. He thought,
-and was right in thinking, very highly of himself; he admired himself
-enormously; but his intellect would never allow itself to be deceived
-even about his own accomplishments.
-
-This clear, unemotional intellect, emotional only in the perhaps
-highest sense, where emotion almost ceases to be recognizable, in the
-abstract, for ideas, for lines, left him with all his interests in
-life, with all his sociability, of a sort essentially very lonely. Many
-people were devoted to him, but he had, I think, scarcely a friend,
-in the fullest sense of the word; and I doubt if there were more than
-one or two people for whom he felt any real affection. In spite of
-constant ill-health he had am astonishing tranquility of nerves; and
-it was doubtless that rare quality which kept him, after all, alive so
-long. How far he had deliberately acquired command over his nerves and
-his emotions, as he deliberately acquired command over brain and hand,
-I do not know. But there it certainly was, one of the bewildering
-characteristics of so contradictory a temperament.
-
-One of his poses, as people say, one of those things, that is, in
-which he was most sincere, was his care in outwardly conforming to the
-conventions which make for elegance and restraint; his necessity of
-dressing well, of showing no sign of the professional artist. He had a
-great contempt for, what seemed to inferior craftsmen, inspiration, for
-what I have elsewhere called the plenary inspiration of first thoughts;
-and he hated the outward and visible signs of an inward yeastiness and
-incoherency. It amused him to denounce everything, certainly, which
-Baudelaire would have denounced; and, along with some mere _gaminerie_,
-there was a very serious and adequate theory of art at the back of all
-his destructive criticisms. It was a profound thing which he said to
-a friend of mine who asked him whether he ever saw visions: "No," he
-replied, "I do not allow myself to see them except on paper." All his
-art is in that phrase.
-
-And he attained, to the full, one certainly of his many desires, and
-that one, perhaps, of which he was most keenly or most continuously
-conscious: contemporary fame of a popular singer or a professional
-beauty, the fame of Yvette Guilbert or of Cléo de Mérode. And there was
-logic in his insistence on this point, in his eagerness after immediate
-and clamorous success. Others might have waited; he knew that he had
-not the time to wait. After all, posthumous fame is not a very cheering
-prospect to look forward to, on the part of those who have worked
-without recompense, if the pleasure or the relief of work is not enough
-in itself. Every artist has his own secret, beyond the obvious one, of
-why he works, it is generally some unhappiness, some dissatisfaction
-with the things about one, some too desperate or too contemptuous sense
-of the meaning of existence. At one period of his life a man works
-at his art to please a woman; then he works because he is tired of
-pleasing her. Work for the work's sake it always must be, in a profound
-sense; and, with Beardsley, not less certainly than with Blake or with
-Rosetti. But that other, that accidental, significant motive, was, with
-Beardsley, the desire to fill his few working years with the immediate
-echo of a great notoriety.
-
-Like most artists who have thought much of popularity he had an immense
-contempt for the public; and the desire to kick that public into
-admiration, and then to kick it for admiring the wrong thing or not
-knowing why it was admiring, led him into many of his most outrageous
-practical jokes of the pen. He was partly right and partly wrong, for
-he was indiscriminate; and to be indiscriminate is always to be partly
-right and partly wrong. The wish to _épater le bourgeois_ is a natural
-one, and, though a little beside the question, does not necessarily
-lead one astray. The general public, of course, does not in the least
-know why it admires the right thing to-day though it admired the wrong
-thing yesterday. But there is such a thing as denying your Master while
-you are rebuking a servant-girl. Beardsley was without the very sense
-of respect; it was one of his limitations.
-
-And this limitation was an unfortunate one, for it limited his
-ambition. With the power of creating beauty, which should be pure
-beauty, he turned aside, only too often, to that lower kind of beauty
-which is the mere beauty of technique in a composition otherwise
-meaningless, trivial, or grotesque. Saying to himself, "I can do what
-I like; there is nothing I could not do if I chose to, if I chose to
-take the trouble; but why should I offer hard gold when an I.O.U. will
-be just the same? I can pay up whenever the money is really wanted," he
-allowed himself to be content with what he knew would startle, doing
-it with infinite pains, to his own mind conscientiously, but doing it
-with that lack of reverence for great work which is one of the most
-sterlizing characteristics of the present day.
-
-The epithet _fin de siècle_ has been given, somewhat loosely, to a
-great deal of modern French art, and to art which, in one way or
-another, seems to attach itself to contemporary France. Out of the
-great art of Manet, the serious art of Degas, the exquisite art of
-Whistler, all, in such different ways, so modern, there has come into
-existence a new, very modern, very far from great or serious or really
-exquisite kind of art, which has expressed itself largely in the
-"Courrier Français," the "Gil Blas Illustré," and the posters. All this
-art may be said to be what the quite new art of the poster certainly
-is, art meant for the street, for people who are walking fast. It
-comes into competition with the newspapers, with the music-halls; half
-contemptuously, it popularises itself; and, with real qualities and a
-real measure of good intention, finds itself forced to seek for sharp,
-sudden, arresting means of expression. Instead of seeking pure beauty,
-the seriousness and self-absorption of great art, it takes, wilfully
-and for effect, that beauty which is least evident, indeed least
-genuine; nearest to ugliness in the grotesque, nearest to triviality
-in a certain elegant daintiness, nearest also to brutality and the
-spectacular vices. Art is not sought for its own sake, but the manual
-craftsman perfects himself to express a fanciful, ingenious, elaborate,
-somewhat tricky way of seeing things, which he has deliberately
-adopted. It finds its own in the eighteenth century, so that Willette
-becomes a kind of petty, witty Watteau of Montmartre; it parodies
-the art of stained glass, with Grasset and his followers; it juggles
-with iron bars and masses of shadow, like Lautrec. And, in its direct
-assault on the nerves, it pushes naughtiness to obscenity, deforms
-observation into caricature, dexterity of line and handling being
-cultivated as one cultivates a particular, deadly _bottle_ in fencing.
-
-And this art, this art of the day and hour, competes not merely with
-the appeal and the popularity of the theatrical spectacle, but directly
-with theatrical methods, the methods of stage illusion. The art of the
-ballet counts for much, in the evolution of many favorite effects of
-contemporary drawing, and not merely because Degas has drawn dancers,
-with his reserved, essentially classical mastery of form. By its
-rapidity of flight within bounds, by its bird-like and flower-like
-caprices of color and motion, by that appeal to the imagination which
-comes from its silence (to which music is but like an accompanying
-shadow, so closely, so discreetly, does it follow the feet of the
-dancers), by its appeal to the eyes and to the senses, its adorable
-artificiality, the ballet has tempted almost every draughtsman, as
-the interiors of music-halls have also been singularly tempting, with
-their extraordinary tricks of light, their suddenness of gesture, their
-triumphant tinsel, their fantastic humanity. And pantomime, too, in the
-French and correct, rather than in the English and incorrect, sense
-of that word, has had its significant influence. In those pathetic
-gaieties of Willette, in the windy laughter of the frivolities of
-Chéret, it is the masquerade, the English clown or acrobat seen at the
-Folies-Bergère, painted people mimicking puppets, who have begotten
-this masquerading humanity of posters and illustrated papers. And the
-point of view is the point of view of Pierrot--
-
-         "le subtil génie
-    De sa malice infinie
-    De poète-grimacier"--
-
-    Verlaine's _Pierrot gamin_.
-
-Pierrot is one of the types we live, or of the moment, perhaps, out
-of which we are just passing. Pierrot is passionate; but he does not
-believe in great passions. He feels himself to be sickening with a
-fever, or else perilously convalescent; for love is a disease, which he
-is too weak to resist or endure. He has worn his heart on his sleeve
-so long, that it has hardened in the cold air. He knows that his face
-is powdered, and, if he sobs, it is without tears; and it is hard to
-distinguish, under the chalk, if the grimace which twists his mouth
-awry is more laughter or mockery. He knows that he is condemned to be
-always in public, that emotion would be supremely out of keeping with
-his costume, that he must remember to be fantastic if he would not be
-merely ridiculous. And so he becomes exquisitely false, dreading above
-all things that "one touch of nature" which would ruffle his disguise,
-and leave him defenceless. Simplicity, in him, being the most laughable
-thing in the world, he becomes learned, perverse, intellectualising his
-pleasures, brutalising his intellect; his mournful contemplation of
-things becoming a kind of grotesque joy, which he expresses in the only
-symbols at his command, tracing his Giotto's O with the elegance of his
-pirouette.
-
-And Beardsley, with almost more than the Parisian's deference to
-Paris, and to the moment, was, more than any Parisian, this _Pierrot
-gamin_. He was more than that, but he was that: to be that was part
-of what he learnt from France. It helped him to the pose which helped
-him to reveal himself: as Burne-Jones had helped him when he did
-the illustrations to the "Morte d'Arthur," (Ill. 7-10) as Japanese
-art helped him to free himself from that influence, as Eisen and
-Saint-Aubin showed him the way to the "Rape of the Lock." (Ill. 53)
-He had that originality which surrenders to every influence, yet
-surrenders to absorb, not to be absorbed; that originality which,
-constantly shifting, is true always to its centre. Whether he learnt
-from M. Grasset or from Mr. Ricketts, from an 1830 fashion-plate,
-or from an engraved plate by Hogarth, whether the scenery of
-Arques-la-Bataille composed itself into a pattern in his mind, or,
-in the Casino at Dieppe, he made a note of the design of a looped-up
-window-blind, he was always drawing to himself, out of the order of
-art or the confusion of natural things, the thing he wanted, the thing
-he could make his own. And he found, in the French art of the moment,
-a joyous sadness, the service to God of Mephistopheles, which his own
-temperament and circumstances were waiting to suggest to him--.
-
-"In more ways than one do men sacrifice to the rebellious angels," says
-St. Augustine; and Beardsley's sacrifice, together with that of all
-great decadent art, the art of Rops or the art of Baudelaire, is really
-a sacrifice to the eternal beauty, and only seemingly to the powers of
-evil. And here let me say that I have no concern with what neither he
-nor I could have had absolute knowledge of, his own intention in his
-work. A man's intention, it must be remembered, from the very fact that
-it is conscious, is much less intimately himself than the sentiment
-which his work conveys to me. So large is the sub-conscious element in
-all artistic creation, that I should have doubted whether Beardsley
-himself knew what he intended to do, in this or that really significant
-drawing. Admitting that he could tell exactly what he had intended, I
-should be quite prepared to show that he had really done the very
-contrary.
-
-Thus when I say he was a profoundly spiritual artist, though seeming to
-care chiefly for the manual part of his work; that he expresses evil
-with an intensity which lifted it into a region almost of asceticism,
-though attempting, not seldom, little more than a joke or a caprice in
-line: and that he was above all, though almost against his own will,
-a satirist who has seen the ideal; I am putting forward no paradox,
-nothing really contradictory, but a simple analysis of the work as it
-exists.
-
-At times he attains pure beauty, has the unimpaired vision; in the
-best of the "Salomé" (Ills. 15-29) designs here and there afterwards.
-From the first it is a diabolic beauty, but it is not yet divided
-against itself. The consciousness of sin is always there, but it is
-sin first transfigured by beauty, and then disclosed by beauty; sin,
-conscious of itself, of its inability to escape itself, and showing in
-its ugliness the law it has broken. His world is a world of phantoms,
-in which the desire of the perfecting of mortal sensations, a desire
-of infinity, has over-passed mortal limits, and poised them, so faint,
-so quivering, so passionate for flight, in a hopeless and strenuous
-immobility. They have the sensitiveness of the spirit, and that bodily
-sensitiveness which wastes their veins and imprisons them in the
-attitude of their luxurious meditation. They are too thoughtful to
-be ever really simple, or really absorbed by either flesh or spirit.
-They have nothing of what is "healthy" or merely "animal" in their
-downward course towards repentance; no overwhelming passion hurries
-them beyond themselves; they do not capitulate to an open assault of
-the enemy of souls. It is the soul in them that sins, sorrowfully,
-without reluctance, inevitably. Their bodies are faint and eager with
-wantonness; they desire more pleasure than there is in the world,
-fiercer and more exquisite pains, a more intolerable suspense. They
-have put off the common burdens of humanity, and put on that loneliness
-which is the rest of saints and the unrest of those who have sinned
-with the intellect. They are a little lower than the angels, and they
-walk between these and the fallen angels, without part or lot in the
-world.
-
-Here, then, we have a sort of abstract spiritual corruption, revealed
-in beautiful form; sin transfigured by beauty. And here, even if we
-go no further, is an art intensely spiritual, an art in which evil
-purifies itself by its own intensity, and the beauty which transfigures
-it. The one thing in the world which is without hope is that mediocrity
-which is the sluggish content of inert matter. Better be vividly
-awake to evil than, in mere somnolence, close the very issues and
-approaches of good and evil. For evil itself, carried to the point of
-a perverse ecstasy, becomes a kind of good, by means of that energy
-which, otherwise directed, is virtue; and which can never, no matter
-how its course may be changed, fail to retain something of its original
-efficacy. The devil is nearer to God, by the whole height from which
-he fell, than the average man who has not recognised his own need to
-rejoice or to repent. And so a profound spiritual corruption, instead
-of being a more "immortal" thing than the gross and pestiferous
-humanity of Hogarth or of Rowlandson, is more nearly, in the final
-and abstract sense, moral, for it is the triumph of the spirit over
-the flesh, to no matter what end. It is a form of divine possession,
-by which the inactive and materialising soul is set in fiery motion,
-lured from the ground, into at least a certain high liberty. And
-so we find evil justified of itself, and an art consecrated to the
-revelation of evil equally justified; its final justification being
-that declared by Plotinus, in his treatise "On the Nature of Good
-and Evil." "But evil is permitted to remain by itself alone on account
-of the superior power and nature of good; because it appears from
-necessity everywhere comprehended and bound, in beautiful bands, like
-men fettered with golden chains, lest it should be produced openly to
-the views of divinity, or lest mankind should always behold its horrid
-shape when perfectly naked; and such is the supervening power of good,
-that whenever a glimpse of perfect evil is obtained we are immediately
-recalled to the memory of good by the image of the beautiful with which
-evil is invested."
-
-In those drawings of Beardsley which are grotesque rather than
-beautiful, in which now all the beauty takes refuge, is itself a moral
-judgment. Look at that drawing called "The Scarlet Pastorale."[1] In
-front, a bloated harlequin struts close to the footlights, outside the
-play, on which he turns his back; beyond, sacramental candles have been
-lighted, and are guttering down in solitude, under an unseen wind. And
-between, on the sheer darkness of the stage, a bald and plumed Pierrot,
-holding in his vast, collapsing paunch with a mere rope of roses, shows
-the cloven foot, while Pierrette points at him in screaming horror,
-and the fat dancer turns on her toes indifferently. Need we go further
-to show how much more than Gautier's meaning lies in the old paradox
-of "Mademoiselle de Maupin," that "perfection of line is virtue?" That
-line which rounds the deformity of the cloven-footed sin, the line
-itself, is at once the revelation and the condemnation of vice, for it
-is part of that artistic logic which is morality.
-
-Beardsley is the satirist of an age without convictions, and he can
-but paint hell as Baudelaire did, without pointing for contrast to any
-contemporary paradise. He employs the same rhetoric as Baudelaire,
-a method of emphasis which it is uncritical to think insecure. In
-that terrible annunciation of evil which he called "The Mysterious
-Rose-Garden," the lantern-bearing angel with winged sandals whispers,
-from among the falling roses, tidings of more than "pleasant sins."
-The leering dwarfs, the "monkeys," by which the mystics symbolised
-the earthlier vices; those immense bodies swollen with the lees of
-pleasure, and those cloaked and masked desires shuddering in gardens
-and smiling ambiguously at interminable toilets; are part of a
-symbolism which loses nothing by lack of emphasis. And the peculiar
-efficacy of this satire is that it is so much the satire of desire
-returning upon itself, the mockery of desire enjoyed, the mockery of
-desire denied. It is because he loves beauty that beauty's degradation
-obsesses him; it is because he is supremely conscious of virtue that
-vice has power to lay hold upon him. And, unlike those other acceptable
-satirists of our day, with whom satire exhausts itself in the rebuke
-of a drunkard leaning against a lamp-post, or a lady paying the wrong
-compliment in a drawing-room, he is the satirist of essential things;
-it is always the soul, and not the body's discontent only, which cries
-out of these insatiable eyes, that have looked on all their lusts,
-and out of these bitter mouths, that have eaten the dust of all their
-sweetness, and out of these hands, that have laboured delicately for
-nothing, and out of these feet, that have run after vanities. They
-are so sorrowful because they have seen beauty, and because they have
-departed from the line of beauty.
-
-And after all, the secret of Beardsley is there; in the line itself
-rather than in anything, intellectually realised, which the line is
-intended to express. With Beardsley everything was a question of form:
-his interest in his work began when the paper was before him and the
-pen in his hand. And so, in one sense, he may be said never to have
-known what he wanted to do, while, in another, he knew very precisely
-indeed. He was ready to do, within certain limits, almost anything you
-suggested to him; as, when left to himself, he was content to follow
-the caprice of the moment. What he was sure of was his power of doing
-exactly what he proposed to himself to do: the thing itself might be
-"Salomé" or "Belinda," "Ali Baba" or "Réjane," the "Morte d'Arthur" or
-the "Rheingold" or the "Liaisons Dangereuses;" the design might be for
-an edition of a classic or for the cover of a catalogue of second-hand
-books. And the design might seem to have no relation with the title of
-its subject, and, indeed, might have none: its relation was of line to
-line within the limits of its own border, and to nothing else in the
-world. Thus he could change his whole manner of working five or six
-times over in the course of as many years, seem to employ himself much
-of the time on trivial subjects, and yet retain, almost unimpaired,
-an originality which consisted in the extreme beauty and the absolute
-certainty of design.
-
-It was a common error, at one time, to say that Beardsley could not
-draw. He certainly did not draw the human body with any attempt at
-rendering its own lines, taken by themselves; indeed, one of his
-latest drawings, an initial letter to "Volpone," is almost the first
-in which he has drawn a nude figure realistically. But he could draw,
-with extraordinary skill, in what is after all the essential way: he
-could make a line do what he wanted it to do, express the conception
-of form which it was his intention to express; and this is what the
-conventional draughtsman, Bouguereau, for instance, cannot do. The
-conventional draughtsman, any Academy student, will draw a line which
-shows quite accurately the curve of a human body, but all his science
-of drawing will not make you feel that line, will not make that line
-pathetic, as in the little, drooping body which a satyr and a Pierrot
-are laying in a puff-powder coffin, in the tail-piece to "Salomé."
-(Ill. 28.)
-
-And then, it must never be forgotten, Beardsley was a decorative
-artist, and not anything else. From almost the very first he accepted
-convention; he set himself to see things as pattern. Taking freely
-all that the Japanese could give him, that release from the bondage
-of what we call real things, which comes to one man from an intense
-spirituality, to another from a consciousness of material form so
-intense that it becomes abstract, he made the world over again in his
-head, as if it existed only when it was thus re-made, and not even
-then, until it had been set down in black line on a white surface,
-in white line on a black surface. Working, as the decorative artist
-must work, in symbols almost as arbitrary, almost as fixed, as the
-squares of a chess-board, he swept together into his pattern all the
-incongruous things in the world, weaving them into congruity by his
-pattern. Using the puff-box, the toilet-table, the ostrich-feather hat,
-with a full consciousness of their suggestive quality in a drawing of
-archaic times, a drawing purposely fantastic, he put these things to
-beautiful uses, because he liked their forms, and because his space of
-white or black seemed to require some such arrangement of lines. They
-were the minims and crotchets by which he wrote down his music; they
-made the music, but they were not the music.
-
-In the "Salomé" (Ills. 15-29) drawings, in most of the "Yellow Book"
-(Ills. 33, 34, 35, 37, 40, 41) drawings, we see Beardsley under this
-mainly Japanese influence; with, now and later, in his less serious
-work the but half-admitted influence of what was most actual, perhaps
-most temporary, in the French art of the day. Pierrot gamin, in
-"Salomé" itself, alternates, in such irreverences as the design of
-"The Black Cape," (Ill. 17) with the creator of the noble line, in the
-austere and terrible design of "The Climax," (Ill. 24) the ornate and
-vehement design of "The Peacock Skirt." (Ill. 16.) Here we get pure
-outline, as in the frontispiece; a mysterious intricacy, as in the
-border of the title-page and of the table of contents; a paradoxical
-beauty of mere wilfulness, but a wilfulness which has its meaning,
-its excuse, its pictorial justification, as in "The Toilette." (Ill.
-22). The "Yellow Book" and the first drawings for the "Savoy," (Ills.
-54-57) a new influence has come into the work, the influence of the
-French eighteenth century. This influence, artificial as it is, draws
-him nearer, though somewhat unquietly nearer, to nature. Drawings like
-"The Fruit Bearers," in the first number of the "Savoy," with its solid
-and elaborate richness of ornament, or "The Coiffing," in the third
-number, with its delicate and elaborate grace, its witty concentration
-of line; drawings like the illustrations to the "Rape of the Lock,"
-(Ill. 53) have, with less extravagance, and also a less strenuous
-intellectual effort, a new mastery of elegant form, not too far removed
-from nature while still subordinated to the effect of decoration, to
-the instinct of line. In the illustrations to Ernest Dowson's "Pierrot
-of the Minute," (Ills. 45-47) we have a more deliberate surrender,
-for the moment, to Eisen and Saint-Aubin, as yet another manner
-is seen working itself out. The illustrations to "Mademoiselle de
-Maupin," seemed to me, when I first saw them, with the exception of
-one extremely beautiful design in colour, to show a certain falling
-off in power, an actual weakness in the handling of the pen. But, in
-their not quite successful feeling after natural form, they did but
-represent, as I afterwards found, the moment of transition to what must
-now remain for us, and may well remain, Beardsley's latest manner. The
-four initial letters to "Volpone," the last of which was finished not
-more than three weeks before his death, have a new quality both of hand
-and of mind. They are done in pencil, and they lose, as such drawings
-are bound to lose, very greatly in the reduced reproduction. But, in
-the original, they are certainly, in sheer technical skill, equal
-to anything he had ever done, and they bring at the last, and with
-complete success, nature itself into the pattern. And here, under some
-solemn influence, the broken line of beauty has reunited; "the care is
-over," and the trouble has gone out of this no less fantastic world, in
-which Pan still smiles from his terminal column among the trees, but
-without the old malice. Human and animal form reassert themselves, with
-a new dignity, under this new respect for their capabilities. Beardsley
-has accepted the convention of nature itself, turning it to his own
-uses, extracting from it his own symbols, but no longer rejecting it
-for a convention entirely of his own making. And thus in his last work,
-done under the very shadow of death, we find new possibilities for an
-art, conceived as pure line, conducted through mere pattern, which,
-after many hesitations, has resolved finally upon the great compromise,
-that compromise which the greatest artists have made, between the
-mind's outline and the outline of visible things.
-
-[1] This drawing is not reproduced in this volume.
-
-
-[Illustrations: see above.]
-
-
-
-
-
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-<pre>
-
-Project Gutenberg's The Art of Aubrey Beardsley, by Aubrey Beardsley
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-
-
-Title: The Art of Aubrey Beardsley
-
-Author: Aubrey Beardsley
-
-Commentator: Arthur Symons
-
-Release Date: October 10, 2015 [EBook #50171]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ART OF AUBREY BEARDSLEY ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org
-(Images generously made available by the Internet Archive.)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-</pre>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
-<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="500" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<h1>THE ART OF</h1>
-
-<h1>AUBREY BEARDSLEY</h1>
-
-<h4>Introduction by ARTHUR SYMONS</h4>
-
-<h5>BONI AND LIVERIGHT, INC.</h5>
-
-<h5>PUBLISHERS &mdash; NEW YORK</h5>
-
-<h5>1918</h5>
-
-<hr class="full" />
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px;">
-<a id="art001"></a>
-<img src="images/art_001.jpg" width="450" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">Aubrey Beardsley</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-
-<p class="caption" style="font-size: 0.8em; margin-left: 20%;">CONTENTS</p>
-
-<p style="margin-left: 20%;"><a href="#PREFACE">Preface</a></p>
-
-<p style="margin-left: 20%;"><a href="#AUBREY_BEARDSLEY">Aubrey Beardsley by Arthur Symons</a></p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-<p style="margin-left: 20%;">
-<span class="caption" style="font-size: 0.8em;">ILLUSTRATIONS</span><br />
-<br />
-1. <a href="#art001">Portrait of Aubrey Beardsley.</a><br />
-2. <a href="#art002">The Litany of Mary Magdalen.</a><br />
-3. <a href="#art003">A Portrait of Aubrey Beardsley. By Himself.</a><br />
-4. <a href="#art004">Incipit Vita Nova.</a><br />
-5. <a href="#art005">Sandro Botticelli.</a><br />
-6. <a href="#art006">"Siegfried." From "The Studio."</a><br />
-7. <a href="#art007">Merlin. From "Le Morte d'Arthur."</a><br />
-8. <a href="#art008">Vignette. From "Le Morte d'Arthur"</a><br />
-9. <a href="#art009">La Beale Isoud at Joyous Gard. From "Le Morte d'Arthur."</a><br />
-10. <a href="#art010">How Queen Guenever Made Her a Nun. From "Le Morte d'Arthur."</a><br />
-11. <a href="#art011">"Of a Neophyte and How the Black Art Was Revealed Unto Him."</a><br />
-12. <a href="#art012">The Kiss of Judas.</a><br />
-13. <a href="#art013">A Suggested Reform in Ballet Costume.</a><br />
-14. <a href="#art014">Baron Verdigris.</a><br />
-15. <a href="#art015">The Woman in the Moon.</a><br />
-16. <a href="#art016">The Peacock Skirt.</a><br />
-17. <a href="#art017">The Black Cape.</a><br />
-18. <a href="#art018">The Platonic Lament.</a><br />
-19. <a href="#art019">Enter Herodias.</a><br />
-20. <a href="#art020">The Eyes of Herod.</a><br />
-21. <a href="#art021">The Stomach Dance.</a><br />
-22. <a href="#art022">The Toilette of Salomé.</a><br />
-23. <a href="#art023">The Dancer's Reward.</a><br />
-24. <a href="#art024">The Climax.</a><br />
-25. <a href="#art025">The Toilette of Salomé. First Drawing.</a><br />
-26. <a href="#art026">John and Salomé.</a><br />
-27. <a href="#art027">Salomé on Settee.</a><br />
-28. <a href="#art028">Design for Tailpiece.</a><br />
-29. <a href="#art029">Design for "Salomé." From "The Studio."</a><br />
-30. <a href="#art030">Design for the Cover of "The Yellow Book" Prospectus.</a><br />
-31. <a href="#art031">Night Piece.</a><br />
-32. <a href="#art032">Portrait of Mrs. Patrick Campbell.</a><br />
-33. <a href="#art033">Title Page Ornament for "The Yellow Book."</a><br />
-34. <a href="#art034">Comedy Ballet of Marionettes, I. From "The Yellow Book." Vol. II.</a><br />
-35. <a href="#art035">Comedy Ballet of Marionettes, II. From "The Yellow Book." Vol. II.</a><br />
-36. <a href="#art036">Comedy Ballet of Marionettes, III.</a><br />
-37. <a href="#art037">Garçons de Café. From "The Yellow Book." Vol. II.</a><br />
-38. <a href="#art038">The Slippers of Cinderella.</a><br />
-39. <a href="#art039">Portrait of Mantegna. From "The Yellow Book." Vol. III.</a><br />
-40. <a href="#art040">The Wagnerites. From "The Yellow Book." Vol. III.</a><br />
-41. <a href="#art041">La Dame Aux Camélias. From "The Yellow Book." Vol. III.</a><br />
-42. <a href="#art042">Madame Réjane.</a><br />
-43. <a href="#art043">Portrait of Balzac.</a><br />
-44. <a href="#art044">Design for Frontispiece to "An Evil Motherhood."</a><br />
-45. <a href="#art045">Design for Front Cover of "Pierrot."</a><br />
-46. <a href="#art046">Design for End Paper of "Pierrot."</a><br />
-47. <a href="#art047">Design for End Paper of "Pierrot."</a><br />
-48. <a href="#art048">Lysistrata.</a><br />
-49. <a href="#art049">An Athenian Woman.</a><br />
-50. <a href="#art050">Myrrhina.</a><br />
-51. <a href="#art051">The Dream.</a><br />
-52. <a href="#art052">The Baron's Prayer.</a><br />
-53. <a href="#art053">The Rape of the Lock.</a><br />
-54. <a href="#art054">Design for the Prospectus of "The Savoy."</a><br />
-55. <a href="#art055">Another Design for the Prospectus of "The Savoy."</a><br />
-56. <a href="#art056">Cover Design. From "The Savoy" No. 1.</a><br />
-57. <a href="#art057">Contents Page. From "The Savoy" No. 1.</a><br />
-58. <a href="#art058">The Abbé. From "Under the Hill."</a><br />
-59. <a href="#art059">The Fourth Tableau of "Das Rheingold."</a><br />
-60. <a href="#art060">Erda. To illustrate "Das Rheingold."</a><br />
-61. <a href="#art061">Flosshilde. To illustrate "Das Rheingold."</a><br />
-62. <a href="#art062">The Death of Pierrot.</a><br />
-63. <a href="#art063">Ave Atque Vale: Catullus, Carmen, Cl.</a><br />
-64. <a href="#art064">Aubrey Beardsley's Book-Plate.</a><br />
-</p>
-
-
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-<h3>AUBREY BEARDSLEY</h3>
-
-<h4>AN ESSAY WITH A PREFACE</h4>
-
-<h5>BY</h5>
-
-<h4>ARTHUR SYMONS</h4>
-
-
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-<h5><a name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE">PREFACE</a></h5>
-
-
-<p>It was in the summer of 1895 that I first met Aubrey Beardsley. A
-publisher had asked me to form and edit a new kind of magazine,
-which was to appeal to the public equally in its letterpress and its
-illustrations: need I say that I am defining the "Savoy"? It was,
-I admit, to have been something of a rival to the "Yellow Book,"
-which had by that time ceased to mark a movement, and had come to be
-little more than a publisher's magazine. I forget exactly when the
-expulsion of Beardsley from the "Yellow Book" had occurred; it had
-been sufficiently recent, at all events, to make Beardsley singularly
-ready to fall in with my project when I went to him and asked him to
-devote himself to illustrating my quarterly. He was supposed, just
-then, to be dying; and as I entered the room, and saw him lying out
-on a couch, horribly white, I wondered if I had come too late. He was
-full of ideas, full of enthusiasm, and I think it was then that he
-suggested the name "Savoy," finally adopted after endless changes and
-uncertainties.</p>
-
-<p>A little later we met again at Dieppe, where for a month I saw him
-daily. It was at Dieppe that the "Savoy" was really planned, and it
-was in the cafe which Mr. Sickert has so often painted that I wrote
-the slightly pettish and defiant "Editorial Note," which made so many
-enemies for the first number. Dieppe just then was a meeting-place for
-the younger generation; some of us spent the whole summer there, lazily
-but profitably; others came and went. Beardsley at that time imagined
-himself to be unable to draw anywhere but in London. He made one or
-two faint attempts, and even prepared a canvas for a picture which was
-never painted, in the hospitable studio in which M. Jacques Blanche
-painted the admirable portrait reproduced in the frontispiece. But he
-found many subjects, some of which he afterwards worked out, in the
-expressive opportunities of the Casino and the beach, lie never walked;
-I never saw him look at the sea; but at night he was almost always to
-be seen watching the gamblers at <i>petits chevaux</i>, studying them with a
-sort of hypnotised attention for that picture of "<i>The Little Horses</i>,"
-which was never done. He liked the large, deserted rooms, at hours when
-no one was there; the sense of frivolous things caught at a moment of
-suspended life, <i>en deshabillé</i>. He would glance occasionally, but
-with more impatience, at the dances, especially the children's dances,
-in the concert room; but he rarely missed a concert, and would glide
-in every afternoon, and sit on the high benches at the side, always
-carrying his large, gilt-leather portfolio with the magnificent, old,
-red-lined folio paper, which he would often open, to write some lines
-in pencil. He was at work then, with an almost pathetic tenacity, at
-his story, never to be finished, the story which never could have been
-finished, "<i>Under the Hill</i>," a new version, a parody (like Laforgue's
-parodies, but how unlike them, or anything!) of the story of Venus
-and Tannhäuser. Most of it was done at these concerts, and in the
-little, close writing-room, where visitors sat writing letters. The
-fragment published in the first two numbers of the "<i>Savoy</i>" had passed
-through many stages before it found its way there, and would have
-passed through more if it had ever been carried further. Tannhäuser,
-not quite willingly, had put on Abbé's disguise, and there were other
-unwilling disguises in those brilliant, disconnected, fantastic pages,
-in which every sentence was meditated over, written for its own sake,
-and left to find its way in its own paragraph. It could never have
-been finished, for it had never really been begun; but what undoubted,
-singular, literary ability there is in it, all the same!</p>
-
-<p>I think Beardsley would rather have been a great writer than a great
-artist; and I remember, on one occasion, when he had to fill up a
-form of admission to some library to which I was introducing him, his
-insistence on describing himself as "man of letters." At one time
-he was going to write an essay on "<i>Les Liaisons Dangereuses</i>," at
-another he had planned a book on Rousseau. But his plans for writing
-changed even more quickly than his plans for doing drawings, and with
-less profitable results in the meantime. He has left no prose except
-that fragment of a story; and in verse only the three pieces published
-in the "<i>Savoy</i>." Here, too, he was terribly anxious to excel; and his
-patience over a medium so unfamiliar, and hence so difficult, to him
-as verse, was infinite. We spent two whole days on the grassy ramparts
-of the old castle at Arques-la-Bataille, near Dieppe; I working at
-something or other in one part, he working at "<i>The Three Musicians</i>"
-in another. The eight stanzas of that amusing piece of verse are
-really, in their own way, a <i>tour de force</i>; by sheer power of will, by
-deliberately saying to himself, "I will write a poem," and by working
-with such strenuous application that at last a certain result, the kind
-of result he had willed, did really come about, he succeeded in doing
-what he had certainly no natural aptitude for doing. How far was that
-more genuine aspect of his genius also an "infinite capacity for taking
-pains?"</p>
-
-<p>The republication by Mr. Lane, the publisher of the "<i>Yellow Book</i>,"
-of Beardsley's contributions in prose and verse to the "<i>Savoy</i>," its
-"rival," as Mr. Lane correctly calls it, with the illustrations which
-there accompanied them, reopens a little, busy chapter in contemporary
-history. It is the history of yesterday, and it seems already at this
-distance of half a century. Then, what brave petulant outbursts of
-poets and artists, what comic rivalries and reluctances of publishers,
-what droll conflicts of art and morality, what thunders of the trumpets
-of the press! The press is silent now, or admiring; the publishers have
-changed places, and all rivalries are handsomely buried, with laudatory
-inscriptions on their tombstones. The situation has its irony, which
-would have appealed most to the actor most conspicuously absent from
-the scene.</p>
-
-<p>Beardsley was very anxious to be a writer, and, though in his verse
-there was no merit except that of a thing done to order, to one's
-own order, and done without a flaw in the process, there was, in his
-prose, a much finer quality, and his fragment of an unachieved and
-unplanned romance has a savour of its own. It is the work, not of a
-craftsman, but of an amateur, and in this it may be compared with the
-prose of Whistler, so great an artist in his own art and so brilliant
-an amateur in the art of literature. Beardsley too was something of a
-wit, and in his prose one sees hard intellect, untinged with sentiment,
-employed on the work of fancy. He wrote and he saw, unimaginatively,
-and without passion, but with a fierce sensitive precision; and he saw
-by preference things elaborately perverse, full of fantastic detail,
-unlikely and possible things, brought together from the four corners
-of the universe. All those descriptions in "<i>Under the Hill</i>" are
-the equivalent of his drawings, and they are of especial interest in
-showing how definitely he saw things, and with what calm minuteness
-he could translate what seemed a feverish drawing into oddly rational
-words. Listen, for instance, to this garden-picture: "In the middle
-was a huge bronze fountain with three basins. From the first rose a
-many-breasted dragon and four little loves mounted upon swans, and
-each love was furnished with a bow and arrow. Two of them that faced
-the monster seemed to recoil in fear, two that were behind made bold
-enough to aim their shafts at him. From the verge of the second sprang
-a circle of slim golden columns that supported silver doves with
-tails and wings spread out. The third, held by a group of grotesquely
-attenuated satyrs, is centred with a thin pipe hung with masks and
-roses and capped with children's heads." The picture was never drawn,
-but does it want more than the drawing?</p>
-
-<p>The prose of "<i>Under the Hill</i>" does not arrive at being really good
-prose, but it has felicities that astonish, those felicities by which
-the amateur astonishes the craftsman. The imaginary dedication is the
-best, the most sustained, piece of writing in it, but there is wit
-everywhere, subtly intermingled with fancy, and there are touches of
-color such as this: "Huge moths, so richly winged that they must have
-banqueted upon tapestries and royal stuffs, slept on the pillars that
-flanked either side of the gateway, and the eyes of all the moths
-remained open and were burning and bursting with a mesh of veins."
-Here and there is a thought or a mental sensation like that of "the
-irritation of loveliness that can never be entirely comprehended, or
-ever enjoyed to the utmost." There are many affectations, some copied
-from Oscar Wilde, others personal enough, such as the use of French
-words instead of English ones: "chevelure" for hair, and "pantoufles"
-for slippers. I do not think that Beardsley finally found a place for
-the word which he had adapted from the French, "papillions," instead of
-"papillons" or butterflies; it would have come amusingly, and it was
-one of his pet words. But his whole conception of writing was that of a
-game with words; some obsolete game with a quaint name, like that other
-favorite word of his, "spellicans," for which he did find a place in
-the story.</p>
-
-<p>Taken literally, this fragment is hardly more than a piece of nonsense,
-and was hardly meant to be more than that. Yet, beyond the curiosity
-and ingenuity of the writing, how much there is of real skill in the
-evocation of a certain impossible but quite credible atmosphere! Its
-icy artificiality is indeed one of its qualities, and produces, by
-mere negation, an emotional effect. Beardsley did not believe in his
-own enchantments, was never haunted by his own terrors, and, in his
-queer sympathy and familiarity with evil, had none of the ardors of a
-lost soul. In the place of Faust he would have kept the devil at his
-due distance by a polite incredulity, openly expressed, as to the very
-existence of his interlocutor.</p>
-
-<p>It was on the balcony of the Hotel Henri IV, at Arques, one of those
-September evenings, that I had the only quite serious, almost solemn,
-conversation I ever had with Beardsley. Not long before we had gone
-together to visit Alexandre Dumas fils at Puy, and it was from
-talking of that thoughtful, but entirely, Parisian writer, and his
-touching, in its unreal way so real, "Dame aux Camélias" (the novel,
-not the play), which Beardsley admired so much, that we passed into
-an unexpectedly intimate mood of speculation. Those stars up yonder,
-whether they were really the imprisoning worlds of other creatures like
-ourselves; the strange ways by which the soul might have come and must
-certainly go; death, and the future: it was such things that I found
-him speaking, for once without mockery. And he told me then a singular
-dream or vision which he had had when a child, waking up at night in
-the moonlight and seeing a great crucifix, with a bleeding Christ,
-falling off the wall, where certainly there was not, and had never
-been, any crucifix. It is only by remembering that one conversation,
-that vision, the tone of awe with which he told it, that I can, with a
-great effort, imagine to myself the Beardsley whom I knew with his so
-positive intelligence, his imaginative sight of the very spirit of man
-as a thing of definite outline, transformed finally into the Beardsley
-who died in the peace of the last sacraments of the Church, holding the
-rosary between his fingers.</p>
-
-<p>And yet, if you read carefully the book of letters to an unnamed
-friend, which has been published six years after his death, it will
-be seen that here too, as always, we are in the presence of a real
-thing. In these naked letters we see a man die. And the man dies inch
-by inch, like one who slips inch by inch over a precipice, and knows
-that the grasses at which his fingers tear, clutching their feeble
-roots, are but delaying him for so many instants, and that he must
-soon fall. We see a fine, clear-sighted intellect set on one problem:
-how to get well: then, how to get a little better; and then, how not
-to get worse. He records the weather of each day, and each symptom of
-his disease; with a desperate calmness, which but rarely deserts or
-betrays him. To-day he feels better and can read Laclos; to-morrow he
-is not so well, and he must hear no music. He has pious books and pious
-friends for the days when he is driven back upon himself, and must turn
-aside his attention from suffering which brings despair. Nothing exists
-any longer, outside himself; and there may be safety somewhere, in a
-"preservative girdle" or in a friend's prayer. He asks for both. Both
-are to keep him alive. He meets at Mentone someone who seems worse than
-himself, and who yet "lives on and does things. My spirits have gone
-up immensely since I have known him." A change of sky, the recurrence
-of a symptom: "to-day, alas, there is a downpour and I am miserably
-depressed." He reads S. Alphonsus Liguori, and it is "mere physical
-exhaustion more than hardness of heart that leaves me so apathetic
-and uninterested." He clings to religion as to his friend, thinking
-that it may help him to keep himself in life. He trains himself to be
-gentle, to hope little, to attack the sources of health stealthily. A
-"wonderful stretch of good health," a few whole days of it, makes him
-"tremble at moments." "Don't think me foolish to haggle about a few
-months," he writes, when he is hoping, all the time, that "the end is
-less near than it seems." He is received into the Church, makes his
-first confession, makes his first communion. It seems to him that each
-is a new clutch upon the roots of the grasses.</p>
-
-<p>The whole book is a study in fear, and by its side everything else that
-has been done, imaginatively or directly, on that fierce passion, seems
-mere oratory or a talking beside the question. Here Beardsley is, as
-he is in his drawings, close, absorbed, limited, and unflinching. That
-he should be so honest with his fear; that he should sit down before
-its face and study it feature by feature; that he should never turn
-aside his eyes for more than an instant, make no attempt to escape, but
-sit at home with it, travel with it, see it in his mirror, taste it
-with the sacrament: that is the marvellous thing, and the sign of his
-fundamental sincerity in life and art.</p>
-
-
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-<h5><a name="AUBREY_BEARDSLEY" id="AUBREY_BEARDSLEY">AUBREY BEARDSLEY</a></h5>
-
-
-<p><i>Anima naturaliter pagana</i>, Aubrey Beardsley ended a long career,
-at the age of twenty-six, in the arms of the Church. No artist of
-our time, none certainly whose work has been in black and white, has
-reached a more universal, or a more contested fame; none has formed
-himself, out of such alien elements, a more personal originality of
-manner; none has had so wide an influence on contemporary art. He
-had the fatal speed of those who are to die young; that disquieting
-completeness and extent of knowledge, that absorption of a lifetime
-in an hour, which we find in those who hasten to have done their
-work before noon, knowing that they will not see the evening. He had
-played the piano in drawing-rooms as an infant prodigy, before, I
-suppose, he had ever drawn a line: famous at twenty as a draughtsman,
-he found time, in those incredibly busy years which remained to him,
-to deliberately train himself into a writer of prose which was, in
-its way, as original as his draughtsmanship, and into a writer of
-verse which had at least ingenious and original moments. He seemed
-to have read everything, and had his preferences as adroitly in
-order, as wittily in evidence, as almost any man of letters; indeed,
-he seemed to know more, and was a sounder critic, of books than of
-pictures; with perhaps a deeper feeling for music than for either. His
-conversation had a peculiar kind of brilliance different in order but
-scarcely inferior in quality to that of any other contemporary master
-of that art; a salt, whimsical dogmatism, equally full of convinced
-egoism and of imperturbable keen-sightedness. Generally choosing to
-be paradoxical; and vehement on behalf of any enthusiasm of the mind,
-he was the dupe of none of his own statements, or indeed of his own
-enthusiasms, and, really, very coldly impartial. I scarcely except
-even his own judgment of himself in spite of his petulant, amusing
-self-assertion, so full of the childishness of genius. He thought,
-and was right in thinking, very highly of himself; he admired himself
-enormously; but his intellect would never allow itself to be deceived
-even about his own accomplishments.</p>
-
-<p>This clear, unemotional intellect, emotional only in the perhaps
-highest sense, where emotion almost ceases to be recognizable, in the
-abstract, for ideas, for lines, left him with all his interests in
-life, with all his sociability, of a sort essentially very lonely. Many
-people were devoted to him, but he had, I think, scarcely a friend,
-in the fullest sense of the word; and I doubt if there were more than
-one or two people for whom he felt any real affection. In spite of
-constant ill-health he had am astonishing tranquility of nerves; and
-it was doubtless that rare quality which kept him, after all, alive so
-long. How far he had deliberately acquired command over his nerves and
-his emotions, as he deliberately acquired command over brain and hand,
-I do not know. But there it certainly was, one of the bewildering
-characteristics of so contradictory a temperament.</p>
-
-<p>One of his poses, as people say, one of those things, that is, in
-which he was most sincere, was his care in outwardly conforming to the
-conventions which make for elegance and restraint; his necessity of
-dressing well, of showing no sign of the professional artist. He had a
-great contempt for, what seemed to inferior craftsmen, inspiration, for
-what I have elsewhere called the plenary inspiration of first thoughts;
-and he hated the outward and visible signs of an inward yeastiness and
-incoherency. It amused him to denounce everything, certainly, which
-Baudelaire would have denounced; and, along with some mere <i>gaminerie</i>,
-there was a very serious and adequate theory of art at the back of all
-his destructive criticisms. It was a profound thing which he said to
-a friend of mine who asked him whether he ever saw visions: "No," he
-replied, "I do not allow myself to see them except on paper." All his
-art is in that phrase.</p>
-
-<p>And he attained, to the full, one certainly of his many desires, and
-that one, perhaps, of which he was most keenly or most continuously
-conscious: contemporary fame of a popular singer or a professional
-beauty, the fame of Yvette Guilbert or of Cléo de Mérode. And there was
-logic in his insistence on this point, in his eagerness after immediate
-and clamorous success. Others might have waited; he knew that he had
-not the time to wait. After all, posthumous fame is not a very cheering
-prospect to look forward to, on the part of those who have worked
-without recompense, if the pleasure or the relief of work is not enough
-in itself. Every artist has his own secret, beyond the obvious one, of
-why he works, it is generally some unhappiness, some dissatisfaction
-with the things about one, some too desperate or too contemptuous sense
-of the meaning of existence. At one period of his life a man works
-at his art to please a woman; then he works because he is tired of
-pleasing her. Work for the work's sake it always must be, in a profound
-sense; and, with Beardsley, not less certainly than with Blake or with
-Rosetti. But that other, that accidental, significant motive, was, with
-Beardsley, the desire to fill his few working years with the immediate
-echo of a great notoriety.</p>
-
-<p>Like most artists who have thought much of popularity he had an immense
-contempt for the public; and the desire to kick that public into
-admiration, and then to kick it for admiring the wrong thing or not
-knowing why it was admiring, led him into many of his most outrageous
-practical jokes of the pen. He was partly right and partly wrong, for
-he was indiscriminate; and to be indiscriminate is always to be partly
-right and partly wrong. The wish to <i>épater le bourgeois</i> is a natural
-one, and, though a little beside the question, does not necessarily
-lead one astray. The general public, of course, does not in the least
-know why it admires the right thing to-day though it admired the wrong
-thing yesterday. But there is such a thing as denying your Master while
-you are rebuking a servant-girl. Beardsley was without the very sense
-of respect; it was one of his limitations.</p>
-
-<p>And this limitation was an unfortunate one, for it limited his
-ambition. With the power of creating beauty, which should be pure
-beauty, he turned aside, only too often, to that lower kind of beauty
-which is the mere beauty of technique in a composition otherwise
-meaningless, trivial, or grotesque. Saying to himself, "I can do what
-I like; there is nothing I could not do if I chose to, if I chose to
-take the trouble; but why should I offer hard gold when an I.O.U. will
-be just the same? I can pay up whenever the money is really wanted," he
-allowed himself to be content with what he knew would startle, doing
-it with infinite pains, to his own mind conscientiously, but doing it
-with that lack of reverence for great work which is one of the most
-sterlizing characteristics of the present day.</p>
-
-<p>The epithet <i>fin de siècle</i> has been given, somewhat loosely, to a
-great deal of modern French art, and to art which, in one way or
-another, seems to attach itself to contemporary France. Out of the
-great art of Manet, the serious art of Degas, the exquisite art of
-Whistler, all, in such different ways, so modern, there has come into
-existence a new, very modern, very far from great or serious or really
-exquisite kind of art, which has expressed itself largely in the
-"Courrier Français," the "Gil Blas Illustré," and the posters. All this
-art may be said to be what the quite new art of the poster certainly
-is, art meant for the street, for people who are walking fast. It
-comes into competition with the newspapers, with the music-halls; half
-contemptuously, it popularises itself; and, with real qualities and a
-real measure of good intention, finds itself forced to seek for sharp,
-sudden, arresting means of expression. Instead of seeking pure beauty,
-the seriousness and self-absorption of great art, it takes, wilfully
-and for effect, that beauty which is least evident, indeed least
-genuine; nearest to ugliness in the grotesque, nearest to triviality
-in a certain elegant daintiness, nearest also to brutality and the
-spectacular vices. Art is not sought for its own sake, but the manual
-craftsman perfects himself to express a fanciful, ingenious, elaborate,
-somewhat tricky way of seeing things, which he has deliberately
-adopted. It finds its own in the eighteenth century, so that Willette
-becomes a kind of petty, witty Watteau of Montmartre; it parodies
-the art of stained glass, with Grasset and his followers; it juggles
-with iron bars and masses of shadow, like Lautrec. And, in its direct
-assault on the nerves, it pushes naughtiness to obscenity, deforms
-observation into caricature, dexterity of line and handling being
-cultivated as one cultivates a particular, deadly <i>bottle</i> in fencing.</p>
-
-<p>And this art, this art of the day and hour, competes not merely with
-the appeal and the popularity of the theatrical spectacle, but directly
-with theatrical methods, the methods of stage illusion. The art of the
-ballet counts for much, in the evolution of many favorite effects of
-contemporary drawing, and not merely because Degas has drawn dancers,
-with his reserved, essentially classical mastery of form. By its
-rapidity of flight within bounds, by its bird-like and flower-like
-caprices of color and motion, by that appeal to the imagination which
-comes from its silence (to which music is but like an accompanying
-shadow, so closely, so discreetly, does it follow the feet of the
-dancers), by its appeal to the eyes and to the senses, its adorable
-artificiality, the ballet has tempted almost every draughtsman, as
-the interiors of music-halls have also been singularly tempting, with
-their extraordinary tricks of light, their suddenness of gesture, their
-triumphant tinsel, their fantastic humanity. And pantomime, too, in the
-French and correct, rather than in the English and incorrect, sense
-of that word, has had its significant influence. In those pathetic
-gaieties of Willette, in the windy laughter of the frivolities of
-Chéret, it is the masquerade, the English clown or acrobat seen at the
-Folies-Bergère, painted people mimicking puppets, who have begotten
-this masquerading humanity of posters and illustrated papers. And the
-point of view is the point of view of Pierrot&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>
-<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"le subtil génie</span><br />
-De sa malice infinie<br />
-De poète-grimacier"&mdash;<br />
-<br />
-Verlaine's <i>Pierrot gamin</i>.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p>Pierrot is one of the types we live, or of the moment, perhaps, out
-of which we are just passing. Pierrot is passionate; but he does not
-believe in great passions. He feels himself to be sickening with a
-fever, or else perilously convalescent; for love is a disease, which he
-is too weak to resist or endure. He has worn his heart on his sleeve
-so long, that it has hardened in the cold air. He knows that his face
-is powdered, and, if he sobs, it is without tears; and it is hard to
-distinguish, under the chalk, if the grimace which twists his mouth
-awry is more laughter or mockery. He knows that he is condemned to be
-always in public, that emotion would be supremely out of keeping with
-his costume, that he must remember to be fantastic if he would not be
-merely ridiculous. And so he becomes exquisitely false, dreading above
-all things that "one touch of nature" which would ruffle his disguise,
-and leave him defenceless. Simplicity, in him, being the most laughable
-thing in the world, he becomes learned, perverse, intellectualising his
-pleasures, brutalising his intellect; his mournful contemplation of
-things becoming a kind of grotesque joy, which he expresses in the only
-symbols at his command, tracing his Giotto's O with the elegance of his
-pirouette.</p>
-
-<p>And Beardsley, with almost more than the Parisian's deference to
-Paris, and to the moment, was, more than any Parisian, this <i>Pierrot
-gamin</i>. He was more than that, but he was that: to be that was part
-of what he learnt from France. It helped him to the pose which helped
-him to reveal himself: as Burne-Jones had helped him when he did
-the illustrations to the "Morte d'Arthur," (Ill. 7-10) as Japanese
-art helped him to free himself from that influence, as Eisen and
-Saint-Aubin showed him the way to the "Rape of the Lock." (Ill. 53)
-He had that originality which surrenders to every influence, yet
-surrenders to absorb, not to be absorbed; that originality which,
-constantly shifting, is true always to its centre. Whether he learnt
-from M. Grasset or from Mr. Ricketts, from an 1830 fashion-plate,
-or from an engraved plate by Hogarth, whether the scenery of
-Arques-la-Bataille composed itself into a pattern in his mind, or,
-in the Casino at Dieppe, he made a note of the design of a looped-up
-window-blind, he was always drawing to himself, out of the order of
-art or the confusion of natural things, the thing he wanted, the thing
-he could make his own. And he found, in the French art of the moment,
-a joyous sadness, the service to God of Mephistopheles, which his own
-temperament and circumstances were waiting to suggest to him&mdash;.</p>
-
-<p>"In more ways than one do men sacrifice to the rebellious angels," says
-St. Augustine; and Beardsley's sacrifice, together with that of all
-great decadent art, the art of Rops or the art of Baudelaire, is really
-a sacrifice to the eternal beauty, and only seemingly to the powers of
-evil. And here let me say that I have no concern with what neither he
-nor I could have had absolute knowledge of, his own intention in his
-work. A man's intention, it must be remembered, from the very fact that
-it is conscious, is much less intimately himself than the sentiment
-which his work conveys to me. So large is the sub-conscious element in
-all artistic creation, that I should have doubted whether Beardsley
-himself knew what he intended to do, in this or that really significant
-drawing. Admitting that he could tell exactly what he had intended, I
-should be quite prepared to show that he had really done the very
-contrary.</p>
-
-<p>Thus when I say he was a profoundly spiritual artist, though seeming to
-care chiefly for the manual part of his work; that he expresses evil
-with an intensity which lifted it into a region almost of asceticism,
-though attempting, not seldom, little more than a joke or a caprice in
-line: and that he was above all, though almost against his own will,
-a satirist who has seen the ideal; I am putting forward no paradox,
-nothing really contradictory, but a simple analysis of the work as it
-exists.</p>
-
-<p>At times he attains pure beauty, has the unimpaired vision; in the
-best of the "Salomé" (Ills. 15-29) designs here and there afterwards.
-From the first it is a diabolic beauty, but it is not yet divided
-against itself. The consciousness of sin is always there, but it is
-sin first transfigured by beauty, and then disclosed by beauty; sin,
-conscious of itself, of its inability to escape itself, and showing in
-its ugliness the law it has broken. His world is a world of phantoms,
-in which the desire of the perfecting of mortal sensations, a desire
-of infinity, has over-passed mortal limits, and poised them, so faint,
-so quivering, so passionate for flight, in a hopeless and strenuous
-immobility. They have the sensitiveness of the spirit, and that bodily
-sensitiveness which wastes their veins and imprisons them in the
-attitude of their luxurious meditation. They are too thoughtful to
-be ever really simple, or really absorbed by either flesh or spirit.
-They have nothing of what is "healthy" or merely "animal" in their
-downward course towards repentance; no overwhelming passion hurries
-them beyond themselves; they do not capitulate to an open assault of
-the enemy of souls. It is the soul in them that sins, sorrowfully,
-without reluctance, inevitably. Their bodies are faint and eager with
-wantonness; they desire more pleasure than there is in the world,
-fiercer and more exquisite pains, a more intolerable suspense. They
-have put off the common burdens of humanity, and put on that loneliness
-which is the rest of saints and the unrest of those who have sinned
-with the intellect. They are a little lower than the angels, and they
-walk between these and the fallen angels, without part or lot in the
-world.</p>
-
-<p>Here, then, we have a sort of abstract spiritual corruption, revealed
-in beautiful form; sin transfigured by beauty. And here, even if we
-go no further, is an art intensely spiritual, an art in which evil
-purifies itself by its own intensity, and the beauty which transfigures
-it. The one thing in the world which is without hope is that mediocrity
-which is the sluggish content of inert matter. Better be vividly
-awake to evil than, in mere somnolence, close the very issues and
-approaches of good and evil. For evil itself, carried to the point of
-a perverse ecstasy, becomes a kind of good, by means of that energy
-which, otherwise directed, is virtue; and which can never, no matter
-how its course may be changed, fail to retain something of its original
-efficacy. The devil is nearer to God, by the whole height from which
-he fell, than the average man who has not recognised his own need to
-rejoice or to repent. And so a profound spiritual corruption, instead
-of being a more "immortal" thing than the gross and pestiferous
-humanity of Hogarth or of Rowlandson, is more nearly, in the final
-and abstract sense, moral, for it is the triumph of the spirit over
-the flesh, to no matter what end. It is a form of divine possession,
-by which the inactive and materialising soul is set in fiery motion,
-lured from the ground, into at least a certain high liberty. And
-so we find evil justified of itself, and an art consecrated to the
-revelation of evil equally justified; its final justification being
-that declared by Plotinus, in his treatise "On the Nature of Good
-and Evil." "But evil is permitted to remain by itself alone on account
-of the superior power and nature of good; because it appears from
-necessity everywhere comprehended and bound, in beautiful bands, like
-men fettered with golden chains, lest it should be produced openly to
-the views of divinity, or lest mankind should always behold its horrid
-shape when perfectly naked; and such is the supervening power of good,
-that whenever a glimpse of perfect evil is obtained we are immediately
-recalled to the memory of good by the image of the beautiful with which
-evil is invested."</p>
-
-<p>In those drawings of Beardsley which are grotesque rather than
-beautiful, in which now all the beauty takes refuge, is itself a moral
-judgment. Look at that drawing called "The Scarlet Pastorale."<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> In
-front, a bloated harlequin struts close to the footlights, outside the
-play, on which he turns his back; beyond, sacramental candles have been
-lighted, and are guttering down in solitude, under an unseen wind. And
-between, on the sheer darkness of the stage, a bald and plumed Pierrot,
-holding in his vast, collapsing paunch with a mere rope of roses, shows
-the cloven foot, while Pierrette points at him in screaming horror,
-and the fat dancer turns on her toes indifferently. Need we go further
-to show how much more than Gautier's meaning lies in the old paradox
-of "Mademoiselle de Maupin," that "perfection of line is virtue?" That
-line which rounds the deformity of the cloven-footed sin, the line
-itself, is at once the revelation and the condemnation of vice, for it
-is part of that artistic logic which is morality.</p>
-
-<p>Beardsley is the satirist of an age without convictions, and he can
-but paint hell as Baudelaire did, without pointing for contrast to any
-contemporary paradise. He employs the same rhetoric as Baudelaire,
-a method of emphasis which it is uncritical to think insecure. In
-that terrible annunciation of evil which he called "The Mysterious
-Rose-Garden," the lantern-bearing angel with winged sandals whispers,
-from among the falling roses, tidings of more than "pleasant sins."
-The leering dwarfs, the "monkeys," by which the mystics symbolised
-the earthlier vices; those immense bodies swollen with the lees of
-pleasure, and those cloaked and masked desires shuddering in gardens
-and smiling ambiguously at interminable toilets; are part of a
-symbolism which loses nothing by lack of emphasis. And the peculiar
-efficacy of this satire is that it is so much the satire of desire
-returning upon itself, the mockery of desire enjoyed, the mockery of
-desire denied. It is because he loves beauty that beauty's degradation
-obsesses him; it is because he is supremely conscious of virtue that
-vice has power to lay hold upon him. And, unlike those other acceptable
-satirists of our day, with whom satire exhausts itself in the rebuke
-of a drunkard leaning against a lamp-post, or a lady paying the wrong
-compliment in a drawing-room, he is the satirist of essential things;
-it is always the soul, and not the body's discontent only, which cries
-out of these insatiable eyes, that have looked on all their lusts,
-and out of these bitter mouths, that have eaten the dust of all their
-sweetness, and out of these hands, that have laboured delicately for
-nothing, and out of these feet, that have run after vanities. They
-are so sorrowful because they have seen beauty, and because they have
-departed from the line of beauty.</p>
-
-<p>And after all, the secret of Beardsley is there; in the line itself
-rather than in anything, intellectually realised, which the line is
-intended to express. With Beardsley everything was a question of form:
-his interest in his work began when the paper was before him and the
-pen in his hand. And so, in one sense, he may be said never to have
-known what he wanted to do, while, in another, he knew very precisely
-indeed. He was ready to do, within certain limits, almost anything you
-suggested to him; as, when left to himself, he was content to follow
-the caprice of the moment. What he was sure of was his power of doing
-exactly what he proposed to himself to do: the thing itself might be
-"Salomé" or "Belinda," "Ali Baba" or "Réjane," the "Morte d'Arthur" or
-the "Rheingold" or the "Liaisons Dangereuses;" the design might be for
-an edition of a classic or for the cover of a catalogue of second-hand
-books. And the design might seem to have no relation with the title of
-its subject, and, indeed, might have none: its relation was of line to
-line within the limits of its own border, and to nothing else in the
-world. Thus he could change his whole manner of working five or six
-times over in the course of as many years, seem to employ himself much
-of the time on trivial subjects, and yet retain, almost unimpaired,
-an originality which consisted in the extreme beauty and the absolute
-certainty of design.</p>
-
-<p>It was a common error, at one time, to say that Beardsley could not
-draw. He certainly did not draw the human body with any attempt at
-rendering its own lines, taken by themselves; indeed, one of his
-latest drawings, an initial letter to "Volpone," is almost the first
-in which he has drawn a nude figure realistically. But he could draw,
-with extraordinary skill, in what is after all the essential way: he
-could make a line do what he wanted it to do, express the conception
-of form which it was his intention to express; and this is what the
-conventional draughtsman, Bouguereau, for instance, cannot do. The
-conventional draughtsman, any Academy student, will draw a line which
-shows quite accurately the curve of a human body, but all his science
-of drawing will not make you feel that line, will not make that line
-pathetic, as in the little, drooping body which a satyr and a Pierrot
-are laying in a puff-powder coffin, in the tail-piece to "Salomé."
-(Ill. 28.)</p>
-
-<p>And then, it must never be forgotten, Beardsley was a decorative
-artist, and not anything else. From almost the very first he accepted
-convention; he set himself to see things as pattern. Taking freely
-all that the Japanese could give him, that release from the bondage
-of what we call real things, which comes to one man from an intense
-spirituality, to another from a consciousness of material form so
-intense that it becomes abstract, he made the world over again in his
-head, as if it existed only when it was thus re-made, and not even
-then, until it had been set down in black line on a white surface,
-in white line on a black surface. Working, as the decorative artist
-must work, in symbols almost as arbitrary, almost as fixed, as the
-squares of a chess-board, he swept together into his pattern all the
-incongruous things in the world, weaving them into congruity by his
-pattern. Using the puff-box, the toilet-table, the ostrich-feather hat,
-with a full consciousness of their suggestive quality in a drawing of
-archaic times, a drawing purposely fantastic, he put these things to
-beautiful uses, because he liked their forms, and because his space of
-white or black seemed to require some such arrangement of lines. They
-were the minims and crotchets by which he wrote down his music; they
-made the music, but they were not the music.</p>
-
-<p>In the "Salomé" (Ills. 15-29) drawings, in most of the "Yellow Book"
-(Ills. 33, 34, 35, 37, 40, 41) drawings, we see Beardsley under this
-mainly Japanese influence; with, now and later, in his less serious
-work the but half-admitted influence of what was most actual, perhaps
-most temporary, in the French art of the day. Pierrot gamin, in
-"Salomé" itself, alternates, in such irreverences as the design of
-"The Black Cape," (Ill. 17) with the creator of the noble line, in the
-austere and terrible design of "The Climax," (Ill. 24) the ornate and
-vehement design of "The Peacock Skirt." (Ill. 16.) Here we get pure
-outline, as in the frontispiece; a mysterious intricacy, as in the
-border of the title-page and of the table of contents; a paradoxical
-beauty of mere wilfulness, but a wilfulness which has its meaning,
-its excuse, its pictorial justification, as in "The Toilette." (Ill.
-22). The "Yellow Book" and the first drawings for the "Savoy," (Ills.
-54-57) a new influence has come into the work, the influence of the
-French eighteenth century. This influence, artificial as it is, draws
-him nearer, though somewhat unquietly nearer, to nature. Drawings like
-"The Fruit Bearers," in the first number of the "Savoy," with its solid
-and elaborate richness of ornament, or "The Coiffing," in the third
-number, with its delicate and elaborate grace, its witty concentration
-of line; drawings like the illustrations to the "Rape of the Lock,"
-(Ill. 53) have, with less extravagance, and also a less strenuous
-intellectual effort, a new mastery of elegant form, not too far removed
-from nature while still subordinated to the effect of decoration, to
-the instinct of line. In the illustrations to Ernest Dowson's "Pierrot
-of the Minute," (Ills. 45-47) we have a more deliberate surrender,
-for the moment, to Eisen and Saint-Aubin, as yet another manner
-is seen working itself out. The illustrations to "Mademoiselle de
-Maupin," seemed to me, when I first saw them, with the exception of
-one extremely beautiful design in colour, to show a certain falling
-off in power, an actual weakness in the handling of the pen. But, in
-their not quite successful feeling after natural form, they did but
-represent, as I afterwards found, the moment of transition to what must
-now remain for us, and may well remain, Beardsley's latest manner. The
-four initial letters to "Volpone," the last of which was finished not
-more than three weeks before his death, have a new quality both of hand
-and of mind. They are done in pencil, and they lose, as such drawings
-are bound to lose, very greatly in the reduced reproduction. But, in
-the original, they are certainly, in sheer technical skill, equal
-to anything he had ever done, and they bring at the last, and with
-complete success, nature itself into the pattern. And here, under some
-solemn influence, the broken line of beauty has reunited; "the care is
-over," and the trouble has gone out of this no less fantastic world, in
-which Pan still smiles from his terminal column among the trees, but
-without the old malice. Human and animal form reassert themselves, with
-a new dignity, under this new respect for their capabilities. Beardsley
-has accepted the convention of nature itself, turning it to his own
-uses, extracting from it his own symbols, but no longer rejecting it
-for a convention entirely of his own making. And thus in his last work,
-done under the very shadow of death, we find new possibilities for an
-art, conceived as pure line, conducted through mere pattern, which,
-after many hesitations, has resolved finally upon the great compromise,
-that compromise which the greatest artists have made, between the
-mind's outline and the outline of visible things.</p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> This drawing is not reproduced in this volume.</p></div>
-
-
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-<h2><a name="ILLUSTRATIONS_BY_AUBREY_BEARDSLEY" id="ILLUSTRATIONS_BY_AUBREY_BEARDSLEY">ILLUSTRATIONS BY AUBREY BEARDSLEY</a></h2>
-
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px;">
-<a id="art002"></a>
-<img src="images/art_002.jpg" width="450" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">THE LITANY OF MARY MAGDALEN</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art003"></a>
-<img src="images/art_003.jpg" width="450" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">A PORTRAIT OF AUBREY BEARDSLEY, BY HIMSELF</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art004"></a>
-<img src="images/art_004.jpg" width="400" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">INCIPIT VITA NOVA</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 425px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art005"></a>
-<img src="images/art_005.jpg" width="425" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">SANDRO BOTTICELLI</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 550px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art006"></a>
-<img src="images/art_006.jpg" width="550" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">SIEGFRIED<br />From "The Studio"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art007"></a>
-<img src="images/art_007.jpg" width="500" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">MERLIN<br />From "Le morte d'Arthur"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art008"></a>
-<img src="images/art_008.jpg" width="400" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">VIGNETTE<br />From "Le morte d'Arthur"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 650px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art009"></a>
-<img src="images/art_009.jpg" width="650" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">"LA BEALE ISOUD AT JOYOUS GARDEN"<br />From "Le morte d'Arthur"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 550px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art010"></a>
-<img src="images/art_010.jpg" width="550" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">HOW QUEEN GUINEVER MADE HER A NUN<br />From "Le morte d'Arthur"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 550px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art011"></a>
-<img src="images/art_011.jpg" width="550" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">"OF A NEOPHYTE? AND HOW THE BLACK ART WAS REVEALED UNTO HIM."</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 550px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<img src="images/art_012.jpg" width="550" alt="" />
-<a id="art012"></a>
-<p class="cap">"THE KISS OF JUDAS"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art013"></a>
-<img src="images/art_013.jpg" width="500" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">"A SUGGESTED REFORM IN BALLET COSTUME"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art014"></a>
-<img src="images/art_014.jpg" width="450" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">BARON VERDIGRIS</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 550px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art015"></a>
-<img src="images/art_015.jpg" width="550" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">THE WOMAN IN THE MOON<br />"From Salomé"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 550px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art016"></a>
-<img src="images/art_016.jpg" width="550" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">"THE PEACOCK SKIRT"<br />"From Salomé"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art017"></a>
-<img src="images/art_017.jpg" alt=" " width="525" />
-<p class="cap">THE BLACK CAPE<br />"From Salomé"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art018"></a>
-<img src="images/art_018.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">THE PLATONIC LAMENT<br />"From Salomé"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art019"></a>
-<img src="images/art_019.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">ENTER HERODIAS<br />"From Salomé"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art020"></a>
-<img src="images/art_020.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">THE EYES OF HEROD<br />"From Salomé"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art021"></a>
-<img src="images/art_021.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">THE STOMACH DANCE<br />"From Salomé"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art022"></a>
-<img src="images/art_022.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">THE TOILETTE OF SALOMÉ<br />"From Salomé"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art023"></a>
-<img src="images/art_023.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">THE DANCER'S REWARD<br />"From Salomé"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art024"></a>
-<img src="images/art_024.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">THE CLIMAX<br />"From Salomé"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art025"></a>
-<img src="images/art_025.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">THE TOILETTE OF SALOMÉ, THE FIRST DRAWING<br />"From Salomé"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art026"></a>
-<img src="images/art_026.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">JOHN AND SALOMÉ<br />"From Salomé"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art027"></a>
-<img src="images/art_027.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">SALOMÉ ON SETTEE<br />"From Salomé"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
-<a id="art028"></a>
-<img src="images/art_028.jpg" width="500" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">DESIGN FOR TAILPIECE<br />"From Salomé"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art029"></a>
-<img src="images/art_029.jpg" width="450" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">DESIGN FOR SALOMÉ<br />"From The Studio"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art030"></a>
-<img src="images/art_030.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">"DESIGN FOR THE COVER OF "THE YELLOW BOOK"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art031"></a>
-<img src="images/art_031.jpg" width="400" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">NIGHTPIECE</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width:475px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art032"></a>
-<img src="images/art_032.jpg" width="475" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">PORTRAIT OF MRS. PATRICK CAMPBELL</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art033"></a>
-<img src="images/art_033.jpg" width="500" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">TITLE-PAGE ORNAMENT FOR "THE YELLOW-BOOK", VOLUME II</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art034"></a>
-<img src="images/art_034.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">COMEDY BALLET OF MARIONETTES I</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art035"></a>
-<img src="images/art_035.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">COMEDY BALLET OF MARIONETTES II</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art036"></a>
-<img src="images/art_036.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">COMEDY BALLET OF MARIONETTES III</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art037"></a>
-<img src="images/art_037.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">GARÇONS DE CAFÉ</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art038"></a>
-<img src="images/art_038.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">THE SLIPPERS OF CINDERELLA</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art039"></a>
-<img src="images/art_039.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">PORTRAIT OF MANTEGNA<br /> From "The Yellow Book," Vol. III.</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art040"></a>
-<img src="images/art_040.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">THE WAGNERITES<br />From "The Yellow Book," Vol. III.</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art041"></a>
-<img src="images/art_041.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">LA DAME AUX CAMÉLIAS<br />From "The Yellow Book," Vol. III.</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art042"></a>
-<img src="images/art_042.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">MADAME RÉJANE</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art043"></a>
-<img src="images/art_043.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">PORTRAIT OF BALZAC</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art044"></a>
-<img src="images/art_044.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">DESIGN FOR FRONTISPIECE TO "AN EVIL MOTHERHOOD"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art045"></a>
-<img src="images/art_045.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">DESIGN FOR FRONT COVER OF "PIERROT"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 650px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art046"></a>
-<img src="images/art_046.jpg" width="650" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">DESIGN FOR END-PAPER OF "PIERROT"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 650px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art047"></a>
-<img src="images/art_047.jpg" width="650" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">DESIGN FOR END-PAPER OF "PIERROT"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art048"></a>
-<img src="images/art_048.jpg" width="600" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">LYSISTRATA</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art049"></a>
-<img src="images/art_049.jpg" width="450" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">AN ATHENIAN WOMAN</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art050"></a>
-<img src="images/art_050.jpg" width="450" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">MYRRHINA</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art051"></a>
-<img src="images/art_051.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">THE DREAM</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art052"></a>
-<img src="images/art_052.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">THE BARON'S PRAYER</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art053"></a>
-<img src="images/art_053.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">THE RAPE OF THE LOCK</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art054"></a>
-<img src="images/art_054.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">DESIGN FOR THE PROSPECTUS OF "THE SAVOY"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art055"></a>
-<img src="images/art_055.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">ANOTHER DESIGN FOR THE PROSPECTUS OF "THE SAVOY"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art056"></a>
-<img src="images/art_056.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">COVER DESIGN<br />From "The Savoy" N° 1.</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art057"></a>
-<img src="images/art_057.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">CONTENTS PAGE<br />From "The Savoy" N° 1.</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art058"></a>
-<img src="images/art_058.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">THE ABBÉ<br />From "Under the Hill"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art059"></a>
-<img src="images/art_059.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">THE FOURTH TABLEAU OF "DAS RHEINGOLD"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art060"></a>
-<img src="images/art_060.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">ERDA<br />To illustrate "Das Rheingold".</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 550px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art061"></a>
-<img src="images/art_061.jpg" width="550" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">FLOSSHILDE<br />To illustrate "Das Rheingold"</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art062"></a>
-<img src="images/art_062.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">THE DEATH OF PIERROT</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 475px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art063"></a>
-<img src="images/art_063.jpg" width="475" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">AVE ATQUE VALE: CATULLUS, CARMEN, CI.</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="r5" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px; margin-top: 4em;">
-<a id="art064"></a>
-<img src="images/art_064.jpg" width="525" alt="" />
-<p class="cap">AUBREY BEARDSLEY'S BOOKPLATE</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="full" />
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-<pre>
-
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