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+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75239 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+                           AUBREY BEARDSLEY
+
+                       THE CLOWN, THE HARLEQUIN,
+                        THE PIERROT OF HIS AGE
+
+
+
+
+              [Illustration: PORTRAIT OF AUBREY BEARDSLEY
+                           _by F. H. Evans_]
+
+
+
+
+                                AUBREY
+                               BEARDSLEY
+
+                       THE CLOWN, THE HARLEQUIN,
+                        THE PIERROT OF HIS AGE
+
+                            [Illustration]
+
+                            HALDANE MACFALL
+
+
+                               NEW YORK
+                          SIMON AND SCHUSTER
+                               MCMXXVII
+
+
+
+
+             COPYRIGHT, 1927, BY SIMON AND SCHUSTER, INC.
+
+
+                PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+
+
+
+                                  TO
+                             EARL E. FISK
+
+                          THIS SMALL TRIBUTE
+                       TO A NOBLE COMPANIONSHIP
+
+                                 H. M.
+
+
+
+
+ “I have one aim--the grotesque. If I am not grotesque I am nothing.”
+
+ “I may claim to have some command of line. I try to get as much as
+ possible out of a single curve or straight line.”
+
+ [AUBREY BEARDSLEY.]
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+        FOREWORD                                                 17
+
+     I: BIRTH AND FAMILY                                         23
+
+    II: CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL                                     27
+
+         “THE PUERILIA”
+
+   III: YOUTH IN LONDON AS A CITY CLERK                          35
+
+         Mid-1888 to Mid-1891--Sixteen to Nineteen
+         THE “JUVENILIA” AND THE “SCRAP BOOK”
+
+    IV: FORMATIVE PERIOD OF DISCIPLESHIP                         42
+
+         Mid-1891 to Mid-1892--Nineteen to Twenty
+         THE “BURNE-JONESESQUES”
+
+     V: BEARDSLEY BECOMES AN ARTIST                              58
+
+         Mid-1892 to Mid-1893--Twenty to Twenty-one
+         MEDIÆVALISM AND THE HAIRY-LINE JAPANESQUES
+         “LE MORTE D’ARTHUR” AND “BON MOTS”
+
+    VI: THE JAPANESQUES                                          95
+
+         Mid-1893 to the New Year of 1894--Twenty-one
+         “SALOME”
+
+   VII: THE GREEK VASE PHASE                                    113
+
+         New Year of 1894 to Mid-1895--Twenty-one to Twenty-three
+         “THE YELLOW BOOK”
+
+  VIII: THE GREAT PERIOD                                        159
+
+         “THE SAVOY” AND THE AQUATINTESQUES
+         Mid-1895 to Yuletide 1896--Twenty-three to Twenty-four
+         I. “THE SAVOY”
+
+    IX: THE GREAT PERIOD                                        234
+
+         ESSAYS IN WASH AND LINE
+         1897 to the End--Twenty-five
+         II. THE AQUATINTESQUES
+
+     X: THE END                                                 260
+
+         1898
+
+        A KEY TO THE DATES OF WORKS BY BEARDSLEY                269
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  PORTRAIT OF AUBREY BEARDSLEY _by F. H. Evans_      _Frontispiece_
+
+  SELF-PORTRAIT OF AUBREY BEARDSLEY                              25
+
+  HOLYWELL STREET                                                33
+
+  HAIL MARY                                                      60
+
+  PENCIL SKETCH OF A CHILD                                       67
+
+  HOW QUEEN GUENEVER MADE HER A NUN                              71
+
+  “OF A NEOPHYTE....”                                            85
+
+  HEADPIECE FROM “LE MORTE D’ARTHUR”                             92
+
+  THE PEACOCK SKIRT                                              94
+
+  THE STOMACH DANCE                                             103
+
+  TITLE-PAGE OF “SALOME”                                        108
+
+  COVER DESIGN FOR “THE YELLOW BOOK” VOLUME III                 112
+
+  LA DAME AUX CAMÉLIAS                                          115
+
+  MESSALINA                                                     121
+
+  PORTRAIT OF HIMSELF                                           125
+
+  NIGHT PIECE                                                   129
+
+  PORTRAIT OF MRS. PATRICK CAMPBELL                             136
+
+  THE MYSTERIOUS ROSE GARDEN                                    139
+
+  DESIGN FOR AN INVITATION CARD                                 143
+
+  THE SCARLET PASTORALE                                         149
+
+  ATALANTA                                                      153
+
+  TITLE PAGE FROM “THE SAVOY” _NOS._ I _AND_ II                 158
+
+  FRONTISPIECE FOR “VENUS AND TANNHÄUSER”                       161
+
+  THE MIRROR OF LOVE                                            165
+
+  A CATALOGUE COVER                                             169
+
+  ON DIEPPE BEACH (THE BATHERS)                                 173
+
+  THE ABBÉ                                                      175
+
+  THE FRUIT BEARERS                                             179
+
+  CHRISTMAS CARD                                                181
+
+  THE THREE MUSICIANS                                           185
+
+  TAILPIECE TO “THE THREE MUSICIANS”                            186
+
+  COVER DESIGN FROM “THE SAVOY” _NO._ I                         189
+
+  THE BILLET DOUX                                               191
+
+  THE TOILET                                                    195
+
+  THE RAPE OF THE LOCK                                          197
+
+  THE BATTLE OF THE BEAUX AND THE BELLES                        201
+
+  THE BARON’S PRAYER                                            203
+
+  THE COIFFING                                                  207
+
+  COVER DESIGN FOR “THE SAVOY” _NO._ IV                         209
+
+  COVER DESIGN FOR “THE SAVOY” _NO._ VII                        213
+
+  FRONTISPIECE TO “PIERROT OF THE MINUTE”                       215
+
+  HEADPIECE: PIERROT WITH THE HOUR-GLASS                        219
+
+  TAILPIECE TO “PIERROT OF THE MINUTE”                          220
+
+  A REPETITION OF “TRISTAN UND ISOLDE”                          223
+
+  FRONTISPIECE TO “THE COMEDY OF THE RHINEGOLD”                 225
+
+  ATALANTA--WITH THE HOUND                                      229
+
+  BEARDSLEY’S BOOK-PLATE                                        231
+
+  THE LADY WITH THE MONKEY                                      235
+
+  COVER DESIGN FOR “THE FORTY THIEVES”                          241
+
+  ALI BABA IN THE WOOD                                          245
+
+  COVER DESIGN FOR “VOLPONE”                                    249
+
+  INITIAL FOR “VOLPONE”                                         255
+
+  THE DEATH OF PIERROT                                          261
+
+  AVE ATQUE VALE                                                270
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORD
+
+
+About the mid-July of 1894, a bust of Keats had been unveiled in
+Hampstead Church--the gift of the American admirers of the dead poet,
+who had been born to a livery-stable keeper at the Swan and Hoop
+on the Pavement at Finsbury a hundred years gone by--and there had
+forgathered within the church on the hill for the occasion the literary
+and artistic world of the ’Nineties. As the congregation came pouring
+out of the church doors, a slender gaunt young man broke away from
+the throng, and, hurrying across the graveyard, stumbled and lurched
+awkwardly over the green mounds of the sleeping dead. This stooping,
+dandified being was evidently intent on taking a short-cut out of
+God’s acre. There was something strangely fantastic in the ungainly
+efforts at a dignified wayfaring over the mound-encumbered ground by
+the loose-limbed lank figure so immaculately dressed in black cut-away
+coat and silk hat, who carried his lemon-yellow kid gloves in his long
+white hands, his lean wrists showing naked beyond his cuffs, his pallid
+cadaverous face grimly set on avoiding falling over the embarrassing
+mounds that tripped his feet. He took off his hat to some lady who
+called to him, showing his “tortoise-shell” coloured hair, smoothed
+down and plastered over his forehead in a “quiff” almost to his
+eyes--then he stumbled on again. He stooped and stumbled so much and so
+awkwardly amongst the sleeping dead that I judged him short-sighted;
+but was mistaken--he was fighting for breath. It was Aubrey Beardsley.
+
+_The Yellow Book_ had come upon the town three months gone by.
+Beardsley, little more than twenty-one, had leaped into fame in a
+night. He was the talk of the town--was seen everywhere--was at the
+topmost height of a prodigious and feverish vogue. Before a year was
+out he was to be expelled from _The Yellow Book_! As he had come up, so
+he was to come down--like a rocket. For, there was about to fall out
+of the blue the scandal that wrecked and destroyed Oscar Wilde; and
+for some fantastic, unjust reason, it was to lash at this early-doomed
+young dandy--fling him from _The Yellow Book_--and dim for him the
+splendour in which he was basking with such undisguised delight. Within
+a twelvemonth his sun was to have spluttered out; and he was to drop
+out of the public eye almost as though he had never been.
+
+But, though we none of us knew it nor guessed it who were gathered
+there--and the whole literary and artistic world was gathered
+there--this young fellow at twenty-three was to create within a year
+or so the masterpieces of his great period--the drawings for a new
+venture to be called _The Savoy_--and was soon to begin work on the
+superb designs for _The Rape of the Lock_, which were to thrust him at
+a stroke into the foremost achievement of his age. Before four years
+were run out, Beardsley was to be several months in his grave.
+
+As young Beardsley that day stumbled amongst the mounds of the dead,
+so was his life’s journey thenceforth to be--one long struggle to
+crawl out of the graveyard and away from the open grave that yawned
+for him by day and by night. He was to feel himself being dragged
+back to it again and again by unseen hands--was to spend his strength
+in the frantic struggle to escape--he was to get almost out of sight
+of the green mounds of the dead for a sunny day or two only to find
+himself drawn back by the clammy hand of the Reaper to the edge of
+the open grave again. Death played with the terrified man as a cat
+plays with a mouse--with cruel forbearance let him clamber out of the
+grave, out of the graveyard, even out into the sunshine of the high
+road, only maliciously to pluck him back again in a night. And we,
+who are spellbound by the superb creations of his imagination that
+were about to be poured forth throughout two or three years of this
+agony, ought to realise that Beardsley wrought these blithe and lyrical
+things between the terrors of a constant fight for life, for the very
+breath of his body, with the gaunt lord of death. We ought to realise
+that even as Beardsley by light of his candles, created his art, the
+skeleton leered like an evil ghoul out of the shadows of his room.
+For, realising that, one turns with added amazement to the gaiety and
+charm of _The Rape of the Lock_. Surely the hideous nightmares that
+now and again issued from his plagued brain are far less a subject
+for bewilderment than the gaiety and blithe wit that tripped from his
+facile pen!
+
+Beardsley knew he was a doomed man even on the threshold of manhood,
+and he strove with feverish intensity to get a lifetime into each
+twelvemonth. He knew that for him there would be few tomorrows--he knew
+that he had but a little while to which to look forward, and had best
+live his life to-day. And he lived it like one possessed.
+
+HALDANE MACFALL.
+
+
+
+
+  AUBREY BEARDSLEY
+
+  THE CLOWN, THE HARLEQUIN,
+  THE PIERROT OF HIS AGE
+
+  1872-1898
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+BIRTH AND FAMILY
+
+
+To a somewhat shadowy figure of a man, said to be “something in the
+city,” of the name of Beardsley--one Vincent Paul Beardsley--and to
+his wife, Ellen Agnes, the daughter of an army surgeon of the family
+of the historic name of Pitt, there was born on the twenty-first day
+of the August of 1872 in their home at the house of the army surgeon
+at Buckingham Road in Brighton their second child, a boy, whom they
+christened Aubrey Vincent Beardsley, little foreseeing that in a short
+hectic twenty-five years the lad would lie a-dying, having made the
+picturesque name of Beardsley world-famous.
+
+Whether the father were a victim to the hideous taint of consumption
+that was to be the cruel dowry transmitted to the gifted boy, does not
+appear in the gossip of the time. Indeed, the father flits illusive,
+stealthy as a phantom in Victorian carpet-slippers, through the
+chronicles and gossip of the boy’s childhood, and as ghostlike fades
+away, departing unobtrusive, vaporous, into the shades of oblivion, his
+work of fathering done, leaving behind him little impression unless it
+be that so slight a footprint as he made upon the sands of time sets us
+wondering by what freak or perhaps irony of circumstance he was called
+to the begetting of the fragile little fellow who was to bear his name
+and raise it from out the fellowship of the great unknown so that it
+should stand to all time written across the foremost achievement of
+the age. For, when all’s said, it was a significance--if his only
+significance--to have fathered the wonderful boy who, as he lay dying
+at twenty-five, had imprinted this name of Beardsley on the recording
+tablets of the genius of his race in the indelible ink of high
+fulfilment. However, in the reflected radiance of his son, he flits a
+brief moment into the limelight and is gone, whether “something in the
+city” or whatnot, does not now matter--his destiny was in fatherhood.
+But at least it was granted to him by Fortune, so niggardly of gifts to
+him, that, from whatever modest window to which he withdrew himself, he
+should live to see the full splendour of his strange, fantastic son,
+who, as at the touch of a magician’s wand, was to make the pen’s line
+into very music--the Clown and Harlequin and Pierrot of his age....
+
+As so often happens in the nursery of genius, it was the bright
+personality of the mother that watched over, guided, and with
+unceasing vigilance and forethought, moulded the child’s mind and
+character--therefore the man’s--in so far as the moulding of mind and
+character be beyond the knees of the gods--a mother whose affection
+and devotion were passionately returned by the lad and his beautiful
+sister, also destined to become well-known in the artistic world
+of London as Mabel Beardsley, the actress. From his mother the boy
+inherited a taste for art; she herself had painted in water colours as
+a girl.
+
+[Illustration: SELF-PORTRAIT OF AUBREY BEARDSLEY
+
+(_Being The “Footnote” from The Savoy_)]
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL
+
+THE “PUERILIA”
+
+
+Of a truth, it was a strange little household in Buckingham Road,
+Brighton. In what to the world appeared an ordinary middle-class
+home, the small boy and girl were brought up by the gently bred and
+cultured mother in an intellectual hot-house that inevitably became
+a forcing-house to any intelligent child--and both children were
+uncannily intelligent. The little girl Mabel Beardsley was two or three
+years older than the boy Aubrey, fortunately for the lad as things
+turned out. The atmosphere of the little home was not precisely a
+healthy atmosphere for any child, least of all for a fragile wayward
+spirit.
+
+It is difficult to imagine the precocious sprite Aubrey poring over
+the exquisitely healthy and happy nursery rhymes of Randolph Caldecott
+which began to appear about the sixth or seventh year of Aubrey’s
+life--yet in his realm Randolph Caldecott is one of the greatest
+illustrators that England has brought forth. You may take it as a sure
+test of a sense of artistry and taste in the parents whether their
+children are given the art of Randolph Caldecott in the nursery or the
+somewhat empty artiness of Kate Greenaway. The Beardsleys were given
+Kate Greenaway, and the small Aubrey thus lost invaluable early lessons
+in drawing and in “seeing” character in line and form, and in the
+wholesome joy of country sights and sounds.
+
+A quiet and reserved child, the small Aubrey was early employing his
+pencil, and revealed an almost uncanny flair for music.
+
+Sent to a Kindergarten, the child did not take kindly to forced
+lessons, but showed eager delight in anything to do with music or
+drawing or decoration.
+
+The little fellow was but seven years old when, in 1879, his mother’s
+heart was anguished by the first terror of the threat of that fell
+disease which was to dog his short career and bring him down. He was
+sent to a preparatory school at Hurstpierpoint for a couple of years.
+Here the child seems to have made his chief impression on his little
+comrades and teachers by establishing his personal courage and an
+extreme reserve--which sounds as if the boy found himself in troubled
+waters. However the ugly symptoms of delicacy now showed marked threat
+of consumption; and a change had to be made.
+
+At nine years of age, in 1881, the child was taken to Epsom for a
+couple of years, when his family made a move that was to have a
+profound influence over his future.
+
+In the March of 1883, in his eleventh year, the Beardsleys settled
+in London. Aubrey with his sister Mabel, was even at this early age
+so skilled in music that he had made his appearance in public as an
+infant prodigy--the two children playing at concerts. Indeed, the boy’s
+knowledge of music was so profound that there was more than whimsy in
+the phrase so often upon his lips in the after-years when, apologising
+for speaking with authority on music, he excused himself on the plea
+that it was the only subject of which he knew anything. His feeling for
+sound was to create the supreme quality of his line when, in the years
+to come, he was to give forth line that “sings” like the notes of a
+violin. But whether the child’s drawings for menus and invitation-cards
+in coloured chalks were due to his study of Kate Greenaway or not, the
+little fellow was certainly fortunate in getting “quite considerable
+sums” for them; for, of a truth, they must have been fearsome things.
+As we shall see, Aubrey Beardsley’s early work was wretched and
+unpromising stuff.
+
+A year of the unnatural life the boy was leading in London made it
+absolutely necessary in the August of 1884, at his twelfth birthday, to
+send the two children back to Brighton to live with an old aunt, where
+the small boy and girl were now driven back upon themselves by the very
+loneliness of their living. Aubrey steeped himself in history, eagerly
+reading Freeman and Green.
+
+In the November he began to attend the Brighton Grammar School; and in
+the January of 1885 he became a boarder.
+
+Here fortune favored Aubrey; and he was to know three and a half years
+at the school, very happy years. His house-master, Mr. King, greatly
+liked the youngster, and encouraged him in his tastes by letting him
+have the run of a sitting room and library; so that Aubrey Beardsley
+was happy as the day was long. His “quaint personality” soon made its
+mark. In the June of 1885, near his thirteenth birthday, he wrote a
+little poem, “The Valiant,” in the school magazine. The delicate boy,
+as might be expected, found all athletic sports distasteful and a
+strain upon his fragile body, and he was generally to be found with a
+book when the others were at play. His early love for Carlyle’s “French
+Revolution,” the poets, and the Tudor and Restoration dramatists,
+was remarkable in a schoolboy. He read “Erewhon” and “enjoyed it
+immensely,” though it had been lent to him with grave doubts as to
+whether it were not too deep for him. His unflagging industry became a
+byword. He caricatured the masters; acted in school plays--appearing
+even before large audiences at the Pavilion--and was the guiding spirit
+in the weekly performances at the school got up by Mr. King and for
+which he designed programmes. His headmaster, Mr. Marshall, showed a
+kindly attitude towards the lad; but it was Mr. Payne who actively
+encouraged his artistic leanings, as Mr. King his theatrical.
+
+Unfortunately, in the radiance of his after-rise to fame, these
+“puerilia” have been eagerly acclaimed by writers on his art as
+revelations of his budding genius; but as a painful matter of plain
+unvarnished truth, they were wretched trashy efforts that ought to have
+been allowed to be blotted from his record and his reputation. Probably
+his performances as an actor were as nerve-racking a business as the
+grown-ups are compelled to suffer at school speech-days. Beardsley
+himself showed truer judgment than his fond admirers in that, on
+reaching to years of discretion, he ever desired, and sought every
+means in his power, to obliterate his immature efforts by exchanging
+good work for them and then destroying them. Indeed, the altogether
+incredible fact about all of Beardsley’s early work is that it was such
+unutterable trash.
+
+Of the influences that were going to the making of Aubrey’s mind at
+school, it is well to note that the youngster bought each volume of the
+“Mermaid” issue of the Elizabethan dramatists as it came out, giving
+amateur performances of the plays with his sister in his holidays. By
+the time he was to leave Brighton Grammar School at sixteen, he had
+a very thorough grip on Elizabethan literature. It is, some of it,
+very strong meat even for sixteen; but Aubrey had been fed on strong
+meat almost from infancy. Early mastering the French tongue, the lad
+was soon steeped in the French novel and classics. From the French
+he worked back to Latin, of which he is said to have been a facile
+reader--but such Latin as he had was probably much of a piece with the
+dog-Latin of a public school classical education.
+
+Now we know from his school-friend, Mr. Charles Cochran, that Aubrey
+Beardsley drew the designs for the “Pied Piper” before he left
+the school in mid-1888--though the play was not performed until
+Christmastide at the Dome in Brighton on Wednesday December the 19th
+1888. Cochran also bears witness to the fact that the pen and wash
+drawing of _Holywell Street_ was made in mid-1888 before he left the
+school. He describes his friend Beardsley with “his red hair--worn _á
+la Bretonne_,” which I take it means “bobbed,” as the modern girl now
+calls it. Beardsley is “indifferent” in school-work, but writes verse
+and is very musical. His “stage-struck mood” we have seen encouraged by
+his house-master, Mr. King.
+
+C. B. Cochran and Beardsley went much to “matinees” at Brighton; and at
+one of these is played “_L’Enfant Prodigue_” without words--it was to
+make an ineffaceable impression on young Beardsley.
+
+There is no question that _L’Enfant Prodigue_ and the rococo of Bright
+Pavilion coloured the vision and shaped the genius of Beardsley; and
+he never let them go. He was to flirt with faked mediævalism; he was
+to flirt awhile with Japan; but he ever came back to Pierrot and the
+bastard rococo of Brighton Pavilion.
+
+Beardsley was now becoming very particular about his dress, though
+how exactly he fitted the red hair “_a la Bretonne_” to his theory
+of severe good taste in dress that should not call attention to the
+wearer, would require more than a little guesswork.
+
+The Midsummer of 1888 came to Brighton Grammar School as it came
+to the rest of the world, and Aubrey Beardsley’s schooldays were
+numbered. At his old school the lank angular youth had become a marked
+personality. Several of his schoolfellows were immensely proud of him.
+But the uprooting was at hand; and the July of 1888, on the eve of his
+sixteenth birthday, saw the young fellow bidding farewell and leaving
+for London, straightway to become a clerk in an architect’s office.
+
+At Brighton Grammar School, Beardsley left behind him all his
+“puerilia”--or what the writers generally call his “juvenilia,” but
+these were not as yet. It is almost incredible that the same hesitant,
+inarticulate, childish hand that drew the feeble puerilities of the
+“Pied Piper” could at the same time have been making the wash drawing
+of _Holywell Street_. It may be that Mr. Cochran’s memory plays him a
+month or two false--it is difficult to see why Beardsley should have
+made a drawing at a school in Brighton of a street in London that he
+had not yet learnt to frequent--but even granting that the _Holywell
+Street_ was rough-sketched in London and sent by Beardsley to his
+schoolfellow a month or two later, in the _Holywell Street_ (1888)
+there is a significance. At sixteen, in mid-1888, Beardsley leaves his
+school and his “puerilia” cease--he enters at once on a groping attempt
+to find a craftsmanship whereby to express his ideas and impressions.
+So far, of promise there has been not a tittle--one searches the
+“puerilia” for the slightest glimmer of a sign--but there is none.
+
+In the _Holywell Street_ there _is_ the sign--and a portent.
+
+It is Beardsley’s first milestone on his strange, fantastic,
+tragi-comic wayfaring.
+
+[Illustration: HOLYWELL STREET]
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+YOUTH IN LONDON AS A CITY CLERK
+
+Mid-1888 to Mid-1891--Sixteen to Nineteen
+
+THE “JUVENILIA” AND THE “SCRAP BOOK”
+
+
+At sixteen, in the August of 1888, Aubrey Beardsley, a lank tall
+dandified youth, loose-limbed, angular, and greatly stooping, went to
+live with his father and mother in London in their home at 59 Charlwood
+Street, Pimlico, in order to go into business in the city as clerk in
+the office of an architect at Clerkenwell, awaiting a vacancy in an
+Insurance office.
+
+The lad came up to London, though intensely self-conscious and shy
+and sensitive to social rebuff, a bright, quick-witted, intelligent
+young fellow, lionised by his school, to find himself a somewhat
+solitary figure in the vast chill of this mighty city. In his first
+little Pimlico home in London, he had the affectionate and keenly
+appreciative, sympathetic, and hero-worshipping companionship of
+his devoted mother and sister. In this home Aubrey with his mother
+and sister was in an atmosphere that made the world outside quite
+unimportant, an atmosphere to which the youngster came eagerly at the
+end of his day’s drudgery in the city, and--with the loud bang of the
+hall-door--shut out that city for the rest of the evening. Brother and
+sister were happy in their own life.
+
+But it is that _Holywell Street_ drawing which unlocks the door. It
+is almost as vital as this home in Pimlico. In those days the dingy
+old ramshackle street better known as Book-Seller’s Row--that made an
+untidy backwater to the Strand between the churches of St. Mary le
+Strand and St. Clement Danes, now swept and garnished as Aldwych--was
+the haunt of all who loved old books. You trod on the toes of Prime
+Ministers or literary gods or intellectual riff-raff with equal absence
+of mind. But Holywell Street, with all its vicissitudes, its fantastic
+jumble of naughtinesses and unsavoury prosecutions--and its devotion
+to books--was nearing its theatric end. In many ways Holywell Street
+was a symbol of Beardsley. The young fellow spent every moment he
+could snatch from his city office in such fascinating haunts as these
+second-hand bookshops.
+
+We know that, on coming to London, Beardsley wrote a farce, “A Brown
+Study,” which was played at the Royal Pavilion at Brighton; and that
+before he was seventeen he had written the first act of a three-act
+comedy and a monologue called “A Race for Wealth.”
+
+A free afternoon would take him to the British Museum or the National
+Gallery to browse amongst antique art.
+
+His time for creative work could have been but scant, and his delicate
+health probably compelled a certain amount of caution on his behalf
+from his anxious sister and mother. But at nine every evening he
+really began to live; and he formed the habit of working at night by
+consequence. We may take it that Beardsley’s first year in London was
+filled with eager pursuit of literature and art rather than with any
+sustained creative effort. And he would make endless sacrifices to hear
+good music, which all cut into his time. Nor had he yet even dreamed of
+pursuing an artistic career.
+
+The family were fortunate in the friendship of the Reverend Alfred
+Gurney who had known them at Brighton, and had greatly encouraged
+Beardsley’s artistic leanings. Beardsley had only been a year
+in London when he retired from the architect’s office and became
+a clerk in the Guardian Insurance Office, about his seventeenth
+birthday--August 1889. Whether this change bettered his prospects, or
+whatsoever was the motive, it was unfortunately to be the beginning
+of two years of appalling misery and suffering, in body and soul, for
+the youth. His eighteenth and nineteenth years were the black years of
+Aubrey Beardsley--and as blank of achievement as they were black.
+
+From mid-1889 to mid-1891 we have two years of emptiness in Beardsley’s
+career. Scarcely had he taken his seat at his desk in the Guardian
+Insurance Office when, in the Autumn of 1889, he was assailed by a
+violent attack of bleeding from the lungs. The lad’s theatres and
+operas and artistic life had to be wholly abandoned; and what strength
+remained to him he concentrated on keeping his clerkly position at the
+Insurance Office in the city.
+
+The deadly hemorrhages which pointed to his doom came near to breaking
+down his wonderful spirit. The gloom that fell upon his racked body
+compelled him to cease from drawing, and robbed him of the solace of
+the opera. It was without relief. The detestation of a business life
+which galled his free-roving spirit, but had to be endured that he
+might help to keep the home for his family, came near to sinking him in
+the deeps of despair at a moment when his bodily strength and energy
+were broken by the appalling exhaustion of the pitiless disease which
+mercilessly stalked at his side by day and by night. He forsook all
+hope of an artistic life in drawing or literature. How the plagued
+youth endured is perhaps best now not dwelt upon--it was enough to have
+broken the courage of the strongest man. Beardsley’s first three years
+in London, then, were empty unfruitful years. From sixteen to nineteen
+he was but playing with art as a mere recreation from his labours in
+the city as his fellow-clerks played games or chased hobbies. What
+interest he may have had in art, and that in but an amateurish fashion,
+during his first year in London, was completely blotted out by these
+two blank years of exhausting bodily suffering that followed, years in
+which his eyes gazed in terror at death.
+
+His first year had seen him reading much amongst his favourite
+eighteenth century French writers, and such modern books as appealed
+to his morbid inquisition into sex. The contemplation of his disease
+led the young fellow to medical books, and it was now that the diagrams
+led him to that repulsive interest in the unborn embryo--especially the
+human fetus--with which he repeatedly and wilfully disfigured his art
+on occasion. He harped and harped upon it like a dirty-minded schoolboy.
+
+Soon after the young Beardsley had become a clerk in the Guardian
+Insurance Office he found his way to the fascinating mart of Jones
+and Evans’s well-known bookshop in Queen Street, Cheapside, whither
+he early drifted at the luncheon hour, to pore over its treasures--to
+Beardsley the supreme treasure.
+
+It was indeed Beardsley’s lucky star that drew him into that Cheapside
+bookshop, where, at first shyly, he began to be an occasional visitor,
+but in a twelvemonth, favoured by circumstance, he became an almost
+daily frequenter.
+
+The famous bookshop near the Guildhall in Queen Street, Cheapside,
+which every city man of literary and artistic taste knows so
+well--indeed the bookshop of Jones and Evans has been waggishly called
+the University of the city clerk, and the jest masks a truth--was but
+a minute’s walk for Beardsley within a twelvemonth of his coming to
+London town; and the youth was fortunate in winning the notice of one
+of the firm who presided over the place, Mr. Frederick Evans. Here
+Beardsley would turn in after his city work was done, as well as at
+the luncheon hour, to discuss the new books; and thereby won into the
+friendship of Frederick Evans who was early interested in him. They
+also had a passionate love of music in common. It was to Frederick
+Evans and his hobby of photography that later we were to owe two of the
+finest and most remarkable portraits of Beardsley at the height of his
+achievement and his vogue.
+
+Thus it came about that Beardsley made his first literary friendship
+in the great city. He would take a few drawings he made at this time
+and discuss them with Frederick Evans. Soon they were on so friendly a
+footing that Evans would “swap” the books for which the youth craved in
+exchange for drawings. This kindly encouragement of Beardsley did more
+for his development at this time than it is well possible to calculate.
+At the Guardian Insurance Office there sat next to Beardsley a young
+clerk called Pargeter with whom Beardsley made many visits to picture
+galleries and the British Museum, and both youngsters haunted the
+bookshop in Cheapside.
+
+“We know by the _Scrap Book_, signed by him on the 6th of May 1890,
+what in Beardsley’s own estimate was his best work up to that time,
+and the sort of literature and art that interested him. None of
+this work has much promise; it shows no increasing command of the
+pictorial idea--only an increasing sense of selection--that is all. His
+“juvenilia” were as mediocre as his “puerilia” were wretched; but there
+begins to appear a certain personal vision.
+
+From the very beginning Beardsley lived in books--saw life only through
+books--was aloof from his own age and his own world, which he did not
+understand nor care to understand; nay, thought it rather vulgar to
+understand. When he shook off the dust of the city from his daily toil,
+he lived intellectually and emotionally in a bookish atmosphere with
+Madame Bovary, Beatrice Cenci, Manon Lescaut, Mademoiselle de Maupin,
+Phèdre, Daudet’s Sappho and La Dame aux Camélias, as his intimates. He
+sketched them as yet with but an amateur scribbling. But he dressed
+for the part of a dandy in his narrow home circle, affecting all the
+airs of superiority of the day--contempt for the middle-class--contempt
+of Mrs. Grundy--elaborately cultivating a flippant wit--a caustic
+tongue. He had the taint of what Tree used to whip with contempt as
+“refainement”--he affected a voice and employed picturesque words in
+conversation. He pined for the day when he might mix with the great
+ones as he conceived the great ones to be; and he sought to acquire
+their atmosphere as he conceived it. Beardsley was always theatrical.
+He noticed from afar that people of quality, though they dressed well,
+avoided ostentation or eccentricity--dressed “just so.” He set himself
+that ideal. He tried to catch their manner. The result was that he gave
+the impression of intense artificiality. And just as he was starting
+for the race, this black hideous suffering had fallen upon him and made
+him despair. In 1890 had appeared Whistler’s _Gentle Art of Making
+Enemies_--Beardsley steeped himself in the venomous wit and set himself
+to form a style upon it, much as did the other young bloods of artistic
+ambition.
+
+As suddenly as the blackness of his two blank years of obliteration
+had fallen upon him a year after he came to town, so as he reached
+mid-1891, his nineteenth birthday, the hideous threat lifted from him,
+his courage returned with health--and his belief in himself. So far he
+had treated art as an amateur seeking recreation; he now decided to
+make an effort to become an artist.
+
+The sun shone for him.
+
+He determined to get a good opinion on his prospects. He secured an
+introduction to Burne-Jones.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+FORMATIVE PERIOD OF DISCIPLESHIP
+
+Mid-1891 to Mid-1892--Nineteen to Twenty
+
+THE “BURNE-JONESESQUES”
+
+
+On a Sunday, the 12th of July 1891, near the eve of his nineteenth
+birthday, Beardsley called on Burne-Jones.
+
+Beardsley being still a clerk in the city--his week-ends given to
+drudgery at the Insurance Office--he had to seize occasion by the
+forelock--therefore Sunday.
+
+The gaunt youth went to Burne-Jones with the light of a new life in
+his eyes; he had shaken off the bitter melancholy which had blackened
+his past two years and had kept his eyes incessantly on the grave;
+and, turning his back on the two years blank of fulfilment or artistic
+endeavour, he entered the gates of Burne-Jones’s house in the long
+North End Road in West Kensington with new hopes built upon the promise
+of renewed health.
+
+We can guess roughly what was in the portfolio that he took to show
+Burne-Jones--we have seen what he had gathered together in the _Scrap
+Book_ as his best work up to mid-1890, and he had done little to add
+to it by mid-1891. We know the poverty of his artistic skill from the
+wretched pen-and-ink portrait he made of himself at this time--a sorry
+thing which he strained every resource to recover from Robert Ross
+who maliciously hid it from him and eventually gave it to the British
+Museum--an act which, had Beardsley known the betrayal that was to
+be, would have made him turn in his grave. But that was not as yet.
+We know from a fellow-clerk in the city that Beardsley had made an
+occasional drawing in wash, or toned in pencil, like the remarkably
+promising _Molière_, which it is difficult to believe as having been
+made previous to the visit to Burne-Jones, were it not that it holds no
+hint of Burne-Jones’s influence which was now to dominate Beardsley’s
+style for a while.
+
+Burne-Jones took a great liking to the youth, was charmed with his
+quick intelligence and enthusiasm, tickled by his ironies, and took him
+to his heart. When Beardsley left the hospitable man he left in high
+spirits, and an ardent disciple. Burne-Jonesesques were henceforth to
+pour forth from his hands for a couple of years.
+
+Beardsley’s call on Watts was not so happy--the solemnities reigned,
+and the great man shrewdly suspected that Beardsley was not concerned
+with serious fresco--’tis even whispered that he suspected naughtiness.
+
+As the young Beardsley had seen the gates of Burne-Jones’s house
+opening to him he had hoped that he was stepping into the great
+world of which he had dreamed in the city. The effect of this visit
+to Burne-Jones was upheaving. Beardsley plunged into the Æsthetic
+conventions of the mediæval academism of Burne-Jones to which his
+whole previous taste and his innate gifts were utterly alien. At once
+he became intrigued over pattern and decoration for which he had so
+far shown not a shred of feeling. For the Reverend Alfred Gurney, the
+old Brighton friend of the family, the young fellow designed Christmas
+cards which are thin if whole-hearted mimicry of Burne-Jones, as indeed
+was most of the work on which he launched with enthusiasm, now that
+he had Burne-Jones’s confidence in his artistic promise whereon to
+found his hopes. Not only was he turned aside from his 18th century
+loves to an interest in the Arthurian legends which had become the
+keynote of the Æsthetic Movement under Morris and Burne-Jones, but
+his drawings reveal that the kindred atmosphere of the great Teutonic
+sagas, Tristan and Tannhäuser and the Gotterdammerung saw him back at
+his beloved operas and music again. Frederick Evans, who was as much
+a music enthusiast as literary and artistic in taste, saw much of the
+young fellow in his shop in Cheapside this year. He was striving hard
+to master the craftsmanship of artistic utterance.
+
+Another popular tune that caught the young Beardsley’s ears was the
+Japanese vogue set agog by Whistler out of France. Japan conquered
+London as she had conquered France--if rather a pallid ghost of Japan.
+The London house became an abomination of desolation, “faked” with
+Japanese cheap art and imitation Japanese furniture. There is nothing
+more alien to an English room than Eastern decorations, no matter how
+beautiful in themselves. But the vogue-mongers sent out the word and it
+was so.
+
+It happened that the Japanese craze that was on the town intrigued
+Beardsley sufficiently to make him take considerable note of the use of
+pure line by the Japs--he saw prints in shops and they interested him,
+but he had scant knowledge of Japanese art; the balance, spacing, and
+use of line, were a revelation to him, and he tried to make a sort of
+bastard art by replacing the Japanese atmosphere and types with English
+types and atmosphere. There was a delightful disregard of perspective
+and of atmospheric values in relating figures to scenery which appealed
+to the young fellow, and he was soon experimenting in the grotesque
+effects which the Japanese convention allowed to him.
+
+Said to be of this year of 1891 is an illustrated “Letter to G. F.
+Scotson-Clark Esq.,” his musician friend, “written after visiting
+Whistler’s Peacock Room.” This much-vaunted room probably owes most of
+its notoriety to the fiercely witty quarrel that Whistler waged with
+his patron Leyland, the ship-owner. It is not clear that the form and
+furniture of this pseudo-Japanese room owed anything whatsoever to
+Whistler; it would seem that his part in its decoration was confined to
+smothering an already existing hideosity in blue paint and gold leaf.
+It was a room in which slender spindles or narrow square upright shafts
+of wood, fixed a few inches from the walls, left the chief impression
+of the Japanesque, suggestive of the exquisite little cages the Japs
+make for grasshoppers and fireflies; and to this extent Whistler may
+have approved the abomination, for we have his disciple Menpes’s word
+for it that Whistler’s law for furniture was that it “should be as
+simple as possible and be of straight lines.” Whistler and Wilde’s war
+against the bric-a-brac huddle and hideousness of the crowded Victorian
+drawing-room brought in a barren bare type of room to usurp it which
+touched bottom in a designed emptiness, in preciousness, in dreariness,
+and in discomfort. Whatsoever Whistler’s blue and gold-leaf scheme,
+carried out all over this pretentious room, may have done to better
+its state, at least it must have rid it of the brown melancholy of the
+stamped Spanish leather which Whistler found so “stunning to paint
+upon.” It is probable that this contraption of pseudo-Japanese art,
+to which the rare genius of Whistler was degraded, did impress the
+youthful Beardsley in this his imitative stage of development, owing to
+its wide publicity. The hideous slender straight wooden uprights of the
+furnishments of which the whole thing largely consisted, were indeed
+to be adopted by Beardsley as the basis of his drawings of furniture
+a year or two afterwards, as we shall see. But in some atonement, the
+superb peacock shutters by Whistler also left their influence on the
+sensitive brain of the younger man--those peacocks that were to bring
+forth a marked advance in Beardsley’s decorative handling a couple of
+years later when he was to give his _Salome_ to the world.
+
+It is not uninteresting to note that, out of this letter, flits for a
+fleeting moment the shadowy figure of the father--as quickly to vanish
+again. At least the father is still alive; for the young fellow calls
+for his friend’s companionship as his mother and sister are at Woking
+and he and his “pater” alone in the house.
+
+Beardsley’s old Brighton Senior House-Master, Mr. King, had become
+secretary to the Blackburn Technical Institute, for which he edited a
+little magazine called _The Bee_; and it was in the November of 1891
+that Beardsley drew for it as frontispiece his _Hamlet_ in which he at
+once reveals the Burne-Jonesesque discipleship.
+
+It is well to keep in mind that the winter of 1891 closed down on
+Aubrey Beardsley in a middle-class home in Pimlico, knowing no one of
+note or consequence except Burne-Jones. His hand’s skill was halting
+and his craftsmanship hesitant and but taking root in a feeling for
+line and design; but the advance is so marked that he was clearly
+working hard at self-development. It was as the year ran out, some six
+months after the summer that had brought hope and life to Beardsley
+out of the grave that, at the Christmastide of 1891, Aymer Vallance,
+one of the best-known members of the Morris group, went to call on the
+lonely youngster after disregarding for a year and a half the urgings
+of the Reverend C. G. Thornton, a parson who had known the boy when at
+Brighton school. Vallance found Beardsley one afternoon at Charlwood
+Street, his first Pimlico home, and came away wildly enthusiastic
+over the drawings that Beardsley showed him at his demand. It is to
+Vallance’s credit and judgment that he there and then turned the lad’s
+ambition towards becoming an artist by profession--an idea that up to
+this time Beardsley had not thought possible or practicable.
+
+Now whilst loving this man for it, one rather blinks at Vallance’s
+enthusiasm. On what drawings did his eyes rest, and wherein was he
+overwhelmed with the revelation? Burne-Jones has a little puzzled
+us in the summer; and now Vallance! Well, there were the futile
+“puerilia”--the _Pied Piper_ stuff--which one cannot believe that
+Beardsley would show. There was the Burne-Jonesesque _Hamlet_ from
+the _Bee_ just published. Perhaps one or two other Burne-Jonesesques.
+He himself can recall nothing better. In fact Beardsley had not done
+anything better than the _Hamlet_. Then there was the _Scrap Book_!
+However, it was fortunate for the young Beardsley that he won so
+powerful a friend and such a scrupulous, honourable, and loyal friend
+as Aymer Vallance.
+
+On St. Valentine’s Day, the 14th of February 1892, before the winter
+was out, Vallance had brought about a meeting of Robert Ross and
+Aubrey Beardsley at a gathering at Vallance’s rooms. Robert Ross wrote
+of that first meeting after Beardsley was dead, and in any case his
+record of it needs careful acceptance; but Ross too was overwhelmed
+with the personality of the youth--Ross was always more interested
+in personality than in artistic achievement, fortunately, for his
+was not a very competent opinion on art for which he had the antique
+dealer’s flair rather than any deep appreciation. But he was a powerful
+friend to make for Beardsley. Ross had the entrance to the doors of
+fashion and power; he had a racy wit and was at heart a kindly man
+enough; and he had not only come to have considerable authority on
+matters of art and literature in the drawing-rooms of the great, but
+with editors. And he was doing much dealing in pictures. Ross, with
+his eternal quest of the fantastic and the unexpected, was fascinated
+by the strange originality and weird experience of the shy youth
+whom he describes as with “rather long hair, which instead of being
+_ebouriffé_ as the ordinary genius is expected to wear it, was brushed
+smoothly and flatly on his head and over part of his immensely high and
+narrow brow.” Beardsley’s hair never gave me the impression of being
+brown; Max Beerbohm once described it better as “tortoise-shell”--it
+was an extraordinary colour, as artificial as his voice and manner.
+The “terribly drawn and emaciated face” was always cadaverous. The
+young fellow seems gradually to have thawed at this forgathering at
+Vallance’s, losing his shyness in congenial company, and was soon
+found to have an intimate knowledge of the British Museum and National
+Gallery. He talked more of literature and of music than of art. Ross
+was so affected by the originality of the young fellow’s conversation
+that he even attributed to Beardsley the oft-quoted jape of the old
+French wit that “it only takes one man to make an artist but forty to
+make an Academician.”
+
+It is well to try and discover what drew the fulsome praise of
+Beardsley’s genius from Ross at this first meeting--what precisely did
+Ross see in the inevitable portfolio which Beardsley carried under his
+arm as he entered the room? As regards whatever drawings were in the
+portfolio, Beardsley had evidently lately drawn the _Procession of Joan
+of Arc_ in pencil which afterwards passed to Frederick Evans, a work
+which Beardsley at this time considered the only thing with any merit
+from his own hands, and from which he could not be induced to part for
+all Ross’s bribes, though he undertook to make a pen-and-ink replica
+from it for him, which he delivered to Ross in the May of 1892. The
+youngster had a truer and more just estimate of his own work than had
+his admirers.
+
+It is well to note at this stage that by mid-1892, on the eve of his
+twentieth year, Beardsley was so utterly mediocre in all artistic
+promise, to say nothing of achievement, that this commonplace
+_Procession of Joan of Arc_ could stand out at the forefront of his
+career, and was, as we shall soon see, to be widely exploited in order
+to get him public recognition--in which it distinctly and deservedly
+failed. He himself was later to go hot and cold about the very mention
+of it and to be ashamed of it.
+
+We have Ross’s word for it at this time that “except in his manner,”
+his general appearance altered little to the end. Indeed, if Beardsley
+could only have trodden under foot the painful conceit which his
+rapidly increasing artistic circle fanned by their praise and liking
+for him, he might have escaped the eventual applause and comradeship of
+that shallow company to whom he proceeded and amongst whom he loved to
+glitter, yet in moments of depression scorned. But it is canting and
+stupid and unjust to make out that Beardsley was dragged down. Nothing
+of the kind. The young fellow’s whole soul and taste drew about him, he
+was not compelled into, the company of the erotic and the precious in
+craftsmanship. And Robert Ross had no small share in opening wide the
+doors to him.
+
+But it is well and only just to recognise without cant that by a
+curious paradox, if Beardsley had been content to live in the mediæval
+atmosphere of the Æsthetic Movement into which his destiny now drifted
+him, for all its seriousness, its solemnity, and its fervour, his art
+and handling would have sunk to but recondite achievement at best.
+It was the wider range of the 18th century writers, especially the
+French writers--it was their challenge to the past--it was their very
+inquisition into and their very play with morals and eroticism, that
+brought the art of Beardsley to life where he might otherwise have
+remained, as he now was, solely concerned with craftsmanship. He was
+to run riot in eroticism--he was to treat sex with a marked frankness
+that showed it to be his god--but it is only right to say that the
+artist’s realm is the whole range of the human emotions; and he has
+as much right to utter the moods of sex as has the ordinary novelist
+of the “best seller” who relies on the discreet rousing of sexual
+moods in a more guarded and secret way, but who does rely on this mood
+nevertheless and above all for the creation of so-called “works that
+any girl may read.” The whole business is simply a matter of degree.
+And there is far too much cant about it all. Sex is vital to the race.
+It is when sex is debauched that vice ensues; and it is in the measure
+in which Beardsley was to debauch sex in his designs or not that he is
+alone subject to blame or praise in the matter.
+
+Whilst Beardsley in voice and manner developed a repulsive conceit--it
+was a pose of such as wished to rise above suspicion of being of the
+middle-class to show contempt for the middle-class--he was one of the
+most modest of men about his art. A delightful and engaging smile he
+had for everyone. He liked to be liked. It was only in the loneliness
+of his own conceit that he posed to himself as a sort of bitter
+Whistler hating his fellowman. It increased his friendliness and opened
+the gates to his intimate side if he felt that anyone appreciated his
+work; but he never expected anyone to be in the least artistic, and
+thought none the less of such for it. He would listen to and discuss
+criticism of his work with an aloof and open mind, without rancour or
+patronage or resentment; and what was more, he would often act on it,
+as we shall see. Beardsley was a very likeable fellow to meet. When he
+was not posing as the enemy of the middle-classes he was a charming and
+witty companion.
+
+Meantime, in the late Spring or early Summer of 1892, Beardsley after
+a holiday, probably at Brighton, called on Burne-Jones again, and is
+said by some then to have made his attempt on Watts, so icily repelled.
+However, to Burne-Jones he went, urged to it largely by the ambition
+growing within him and fostered strenuously by Vallance and his
+friends, to dare all and make for art.
+
+Burne-Jones received him with characteristic generosity. And remember
+that Beardsley was now simply a blatant and unashamed mimic of
+Burne-Jones, and a pretty mediocre artist at that. We shall soon see a
+very different reception of the youth by a very different temperament.
+Burne-Jones, cordial and enthusiastic and sympathetic, gave the young
+fellow the soundest advice he ever had, saying that Beardsley “had
+learnt too much from the old masters and would benefit by the training
+of an art school.” From this interview young Beardsley came back in
+high fettle. He drew a caricature of himself being kicked down the
+steps of the National Gallery by the old masters.
+
+This Summer of 1892 saw Beardsley in Paris, probably on a holiday;
+and as probably with an introduction from Burne-Jones to Puvis de
+Chavannes, who received the young fellow well, and greatly encouraged
+him, introducing him to one of his brother painters as “un jeune
+artiste Anglais qui fait des choses etonnantes.”
+
+Beardsley, with the astute earnestness with which he weighed all
+intelligent criticism, promptly followed the advice of Burne-Jones and
+Puvis de Chavannes, and put himself down to attend Professor Brown’s
+night-school at Westminster, whilst during the day he went on with
+his clerking at the Guardian Insurance Office. This schooling was to
+be of the scantiest, but it probably had one curious effect on his
+art--the Japanese art was on the town, so was Whistler; the studios
+talked Japanese prints as today they talk Cubism and Blast. And it
+is significant that the drawing which Beardsley made of Professor
+Brown, perhaps the best work of his hands up to this time, is strongly
+influenced by the scratchy nervous line of Whistler’s etching and is
+spaced in the Japanese convention. The irony of this Whistlerianism
+is lost upon us if we forget the bitter antagonism of Whistler and
+Burne-Jones at this very time--Whistler had published his _Gentle Art
+of Making Enemies_ in 1890, and London had not recovered from its
+enjoyment of the spites of the great ones. Beardsley himself used to
+say that he had not been to Brown’s more than half a dozen times, but
+his eager eyes were quick to see.
+
+However, renewed health, an enlarging circle of artistic friends, an
+occasional peep into the home of genius, hours snatched from the city
+and spent in bookshops, the British Museum, the National Gallery, the
+Opera and the Concert room, revived ambition.
+
+And Vallance, cheered by Burne-Jones’s reception of the youth
+now sought to clinch matters by bringing Beardsley at his most
+impressionable age into the charmed circle of William Morris. The
+generous soul of Vallance little understood Morris--or Beardsley; but
+his impulse was on all fours with his life-long devotion to the gifted
+boy’s cause.
+
+Before we eavesdrop at the William Morris meeting, let us rid ourselves
+of a few illusions that have gathered about Beardsley. First of all,
+Beardsley is on the edge of his twentieth birthday and has not made
+a drawing or shown a sign of anything but mediocre achievement.
+Next--and perhaps this is the most surprising as it is an interesting
+fact--Beardsley had scarcely, if indeed at all, seen a specimen of
+the Kelmscott books, their style, their decoration, or their content!
+Now Vallance, wrapped up in mediævalism, and Frederick Evans handling
+rich and rare hobbies in book-binding, probably never realised that
+to Beardsley it might be a closed book, and worse--probably not very
+exhilarating if opened, except for the rich blackness of some of the
+conventionally decorated pages. It is very important to remember this.
+And we must be just to Morris. Before we step further a-tiptoe to
+Morris’s house, remember another fact; Beardsley was not a thinker,
+not an intellectual man. He was a born artist to his long slender
+finger-tips; he sucked all the honey from art, whether fiction or
+drawing or decoration of any kind with a feverish eagerness that made
+the world think that because he was wholly bookish, he was therefore
+intellectual. He was remarkably unintellectual. He was a pure artist
+in that he was concerned wholly with the emotions, with his feelings,
+with the impressions that life or books made upon his senses. But he
+knew absolutely nothing of world questions. Beardsley knew and cared
+nothing for world affairs, knew and cared as much about deep social
+injustices or rights or struggles as a housemaid. They did not concern
+him, and he had but a yawn for such things. Social questions bored
+him undisguisedly. Indeed by Social he would only have understood the
+society of the great--his idea of it was an extravagantly dressed
+society of polished people with elaborate manners, who despised the
+middle-class virtues as being rather vulgar, who lived in a romantic
+whirl of exquisite flippancies not without picturesque adultery, doing
+each one as the mood took him--only doing it with an air and dressing
+well for the part.
+
+Unfortunately, we have not been given Beardsley’s correspondence of
+these days, and the German edition of his letters has not been done
+into English; but read Beardsley’s letters during the last terrible
+years of his short life to his friend the poet Gray who became a
+priest, and you will be amazed by the absence of any intellectual or
+social interest of any kind whatsoever in the great questions that were
+racking the age. They might be the letters of a humdrum schoolboy--they
+even lack manhood--they do not suggest quite a fully developed
+intelligence.
+
+However, Morris had frequently of late expressed to Vallance his
+troubled state in getting “suitable illustrations” for his Kelmscott
+books--he was particularly plagued about the reprint he was then
+anxious to produce--_Sidonia the Sorceress_. Vallance leaped at
+the chance of getting the opening for young Beardsley; and at once
+persuaded Beardsley to make a drawing, add it to his portfolio, and all
+being ready, on a fine Sunday afternoon in the early summer of 1892,
+his portfolio under his arm, Beardsley with Vallance made their way to
+Hammersmith and entered the gates of the great man. Morris received
+the young man courteously. But he was about to be asked to swallow a
+ridiculous pill.
+
+We have seen that up to this time the portfolio was empty of all but
+mediocrity--a Burne-Jonesesque or so at best. To put the froth on
+the black trouble, Vallance had evidently never thought of the utter
+unfitness of Beardsley’s scratchy pen-drawn Japanesque grotesques
+for the Kelmscott Press; whilst Beardsley probably did not know what
+the Kelmscott Press meant. He was soon to know--and to achieve. Can
+one imagine a more fantastic act than taking this drawing to show to
+Morris? Imagine how a trivial, cheap, very tentative weak line, in
+grotesque swirls and wriggles, of Sidonia the Sorceress with the black
+cat appealed to Morris, who was as serious about the “fat blacks” of
+his Kelmscott decorations as about his first-born! Remember that up to
+this time Beardsley had not attempted his strong black line with flat
+black masses. Morris would have been a fool to commission this young
+fellow for the work, judging him by his then achievement. Let us go
+much further, Beardsley himself would not have been sure of fulfilling
+it--far less any of his sponsors. And yet!----
+
+Could Morris but have drawn aside the curtain of the future a few
+narrow folds! Within a few days of that somewhat dishearting meeting
+of these two men, the young Beardsley was to be launching on a rival
+publication to the Kelmscott Press--he was to smash it to pieces and
+make a masterpiece of what the Kelmscott enthusiasm had never been
+able to lift above monotonous mechanism! The lad only had to brood
+awhile over a Kelmscott to beat it at every point--and Frederick Evans
+was about to give him the chance, and he was to beat it to a dull
+futility. Anything further removed from Beardsley’s vision and essence
+than mediævalism it would be hard to find; but when the problem was
+set him, he faced it; and it is a miracle that he made of it what he
+did. However, not a soul who had thus far seen his work, not one who
+was at Morris’s house that Sunday afternoon, could foresee it. Morris
+least of all. Morris was too self-centred to foresee what this lank
+young lad from an insurance office meant to himself and all for which
+he stood in book illustration. Vallance, for all his personal affection
+and loyalty to Morris, was disappointed in that Morris failed to be
+aroused to any interest whatsoever over the drawings in Beardsley’s
+portfolio. Morris went solemnly through the portfolio, thought little
+of the work, considered the features of the figures neither beautiful
+nor attractive, but probably trying to find _something_ to praise,
+at last said “I see you have a feeling for draperies, and,” he added
+fatuously, “I should advise you to cultivate it”--and so saying he
+dismissed the whole subject. The eager youth was bitterly disappointed;
+but it is only fair to Beardsley to say that he was wounded by being
+repulsed and “not liked,” rather than that he was wounded about his
+drawings. It was a delightful trait in the man, his life long, that he
+was far more anxious for people to be friendly with him than to care
+for his drawings--he had no personal feeling whatsoever against anyone
+for disliking his work. The youth left the premises of William Morris
+with a fixed determination never to go there again--and he could never
+be induced to go.
+
+Within a few months of Beardsley’s shutting the gates of Kelmscott
+House on himself for the first and the last time, Vallance was to lead
+another forlorn hope to Morris on Beardsley’s behalf; but the lad
+refused to go, and Vallance went alone--but that is another story.
+For even as Morris shut the gates on Beardsley’s endeavour, there was
+to come another who was to fling open to Beardsley the gates to a far
+wider realm and enable him to pluck the beard of William Morris in
+the doing--one John Dent, a publisher. This Formative Year of sheer
+Burne-Jonesesque mimicry was to end in a moment of intense emotion for
+the young city clerk. He was about to leave the city behind him for
+ever--desert the night-school at Westminster--burn his boats behind
+him--and launch on his destiny as an artist.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+BEARDSLEY BECOMES AN ARTIST
+
+Mid-1892 to Mid-1893--Twenty to twenty-one
+
+MEDIÆVALISM AND THE HAIRY-LINE JAPANESQUES
+
+“LE MORTE D’ARTHUR” AND “BON MOTS”
+
+
+John M. Dent, then a young publisher, was fired with the ambition to
+put forth the great literary classics for the ordinary man in a way
+that should be within the reach of his purse, yet rival the vastly
+costly bookmaking of William Morris and his allies of the Kelmscott
+Press. Dent fixed upon Sir Thomas Malory’s _Le Morte d’Arthur_ to
+lead the way in his venture; and he confided his scheme to his friend
+Frederick Evans of the Jones and Evans bookshop in Queen Street,
+Cheapside. He planned to publish the handsome book in parts--300
+copies on Dutch hand-made paper and fifteen hundred ordinary copies;
+but he was troubled and at his wit’s end as to a fitting decorator and
+illustrator. He must have a fresh and original artist.
+
+[Illustration: HAIL MARY]
+
+Frederick Evans and John Dent were talking over this perplexity in
+the Cheapside bookshop when Evans suddenly remarked to Dent that he
+believed he had found for him the very man; and he was showing to Dent
+Beardsley’s _Hail Mary_, when, looking up, he whispered: “and here he
+comes!” There entered a spick-and-span shadow of a young man like one
+risen from the well-dressed dead--Aubrey Beardsley had happened in,
+according to his daily wont, strolling over at the luncheon hour from
+the Guardian Insurance Office hard by for his midday rummage amongst
+the books. It was like a gift from the gods! Frederick Evans nudged the
+other’s arm, pointing towards the strange youth, and repeated: “There’s
+your man!”
+
+To Beardsley’s surprise, Evans beckoned him towards his desk where he
+was in earnest colloquy with the man whom the young fellow was now to
+discover to be the well-known publisher.
+
+So Beardsley and J. M. Dent met.
+
+Introducing the youthful dandy to Dent as the ideal illustrator for his
+“_Morte d’Arthur_,” Evans somewhat bewildered Beardsley; the sudden
+splendour of the opportunity to prove his gifts rather took him aback.
+Dent however told the youth reassuringly that the recommendation of
+Frederick Evans was in itself enough, but if Beardsley would make him
+a drawing and prove his decorative gifts for this particular book, he
+would at once commission him to illustrate the work.
+
+Beardsley, frantically delighted and excited, undertook to draw a
+specimen design for Dent’s decision; yet had his hesitant modesties.
+Remember that up to this time he had practically drawn nothing of
+any consequence--he was utterly unknown--and his superb master-work
+that was to be, so different from and so little akin in any way to
+mediævalism, was hidden even from his own vision. The few drawings he
+had made were in mimicry of Burne-Jones and promised well enough for
+a mediæval missal in a pretty-pretty sort of way. He was becoming a
+trifle old for studentship--he was twenty before he made a drawing that
+was not mediocre. He had never seen one of the elaborate Morris books,
+and Frederick Evans had to show him a Kelmscott in order to give him
+some idea of what was in Dent’s mind--of what was expected of him.
+
+At last he made to depart; and, shaking hands with Frederick Evans at
+the shop-door, he hesitated and, speaking low, said: “It’s too good a
+chance. I’m sure I shan’t be equal to it. I am not worthy of it.” Evans
+assured him that he only had to set himself to it and all would be well.
+
+Within a few days, Beardsley putting forth all his powers to create
+the finest thing he could, and making an eager study of the Kelmscott
+tradition, took the drawing to Dent--the elaborate and now famous
+Burne-Jonesesque design which is known as _The Achieving of the San
+Grael_, which must have been as much a revelation of his powers to the
+youth himself as it was to Dent. The drawing was destined to appear
+in gravure as the frontispiece to the Second volume of the _Morte
+d’Arthur_.
+
+Now it is most important to note that this, Beardsley’s first serious
+original work, shows him in mid-1892, at twenty, to have made a bold
+effort to create a marked style by combining his Burne-Jonesesque
+mediævalism with his Japanesques of the Hairy Line; _and the design
+is signed with his early “Japanesque mark.”_ It is his first use of
+the Japanesque mark. Any designs signed with his name before this time
+reveal unmistakably the initials A. V. B. The early “Japanesque mark”
+is always stunted and rude. Beardsley’s candlesticks were a sort of
+mascot to him; and I feel sure that the Japanese mark was meant for
+three candles and three flames--a baser explanation was given by some,
+but it was only the evil thought of those who tried to see evil in all
+that Beardsley did.
+
+Dent at once commissioned the youth to illustrate and decorate the
+_Morte d’Arthur_, which was to begin to appear in parts a year
+thereafter, in the June of 1893--the second volume in 1894.
+
+So Aubrey Beardsley entered upon his first great undertaking--to mimic
+the mediæval woodcut or what the Morris School took to be the mediæval
+woodcut and--to better his instruction. Frederick Evans set the diadem
+of his realm upon the lad’s brow in a bookshop in Cheapside; and John
+Dent threw open the gates to that fantastic realm so that he might
+enter in. With the prospect of an art career, Beardsley was now to have
+the extraordinary good fortune to meet a literary man who was to vaunt
+him before the world and reveal him to the public--Lewis C. Hind.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Boldly launching on an artistic career, encouraged by this elaborate
+and important work for Dent, Beardsley, at his sister’s strong urging
+and solicitation, about his twentieth birthday resigned his clerkship
+in the Guardian Insurance Office and for good and all turned his back
+on the city. At the same time, feeling that the British Museum and the
+National Gallery gave him more teaching than he was getting at the
+studio, he withdrew from Brown’s school at Westminster. Being now in
+close touch with Dent, and having his day free, Beardsley was asked
+to make some grotesques for the three little volumes of _Bon Mots_ by
+famous wits which Dent was about to publish. So it came about that
+Beardsley poured out his Japanesque grotesques and _Morte d’Arthur_
+mediævalisms side by side! and was not too careful as to which was the
+grotesque and which the mediævalism. For the _Bon Mots_ he made no
+pretence of illustration--the florid scribbling lines drew fantastic
+designs utterly unrelated to the text or atmosphere of the wits, and
+were about as thoroughly bad as illustrations in the vital quality of
+an illustration as could well be. In artistic achievement they were
+trivialities, mostly scratchy and tedious, some of them better than
+others, but mostly revealing Beardsley’s defects and occasionally
+dragging him back perilously near to the puerilia of his boyhood. But
+the severe conditions and limitations of the _Morte d’Arthur_ page held
+Beardsley to good velvety blacks and strong line and masses, and were
+the finest education in art that he ever went through--for he taught
+himself craftsmanship as he went in the _Morte d’Arthur_. It made him.
+
+One has only to look at the general mediocrity of the grotesques for
+the _Bon Mots_ to realise what a severe self-discipline the solid black
+decorations of the mediæval _Morte d’Arthur_ put upon Beardsley for the
+utterance of his genius. Beardsley knew full well that his whole career
+depended on those designs for the _Morte d’Arthur_, and he strove to
+reach his full powers in making them.
+
+Anning Bell was at this time pouring out his bookplates and kindred
+designs, and in many of Beardsley’s drawings one could almost tell
+which of Anning Bell’s decorations he had been looking at last. To
+Walter Crane he owed less, but not a little. Greek vase-painting was
+not lost upon Beardsley, but as yet he had scant chance or leisure to
+make a thorough study of it, as he was to do later to the prodigious
+enhancement of his powers; he was content as yet to acknowledge his
+debt to Greece through Anning Bell.
+
+We know from Beardsley’s letters to his old school that he was during
+this autumn at work upon drawings for Miss Burney’s _Evelina_ and,
+whether they have vanished or were never completed, on drawings for
+Hawthorne’s _Tales_ and Mackenzie’s _Man of Feeling_.
+
+Such writers as recall the early Beardsley recall him through the
+glamour that colours their backward glancing from the graveside of
+achieved genius. The “revelations on opening the portfolio” are written
+“after the event,” when the contents of the portfolio have been
+forgotten and deluding memory flings amongst their drab performance
+masterpieces rose-leafwise from the _Rape of the Lock_ and _The Savoy_
+for makeweight. Beardsley did not “arrive” at once--we are about to see
+him arrive. But once he found himself, his swift achievement is the
+more a marvel--almost a miracle.
+
+It was fortunate for Dent that Beardsley flung himself at the
+decoration of the _Morte d’Arthur_ with almost mad enthusiasm. He knew
+that he had to “make good” or go down, and so back to the city. And he
+poured forth his designs in the quiet of his candles’ light, the blinds
+drawn, and London asleep--poured them forth in that secret atmosphere
+that detested an eyewitness to his craftsmanship and barred the door to
+all. Most folk would reason that Beardsley, being free of the city, had
+now his whole day to work; but the lay mind rarely grasps the fact that
+true artistic utterance is compact of mood and is outside mere industry
+or intellectual desire to work. To have more time meant a prodigious
+increase in Beardsley’s powers to brood upon his art but not to create
+it. Not a bit of it. He was about the most sociable butterfly that
+ever enjoyed the sunshine of life as it passed. By day he haunted the
+British Museum, the bookshops, the print-shops, or paid social calls,
+delighting to go to the Café Royal and such places. No one ever saw him
+work. He loved music above all the arts. In the coming years, when he
+was to be a vogue for a brief season, people would ask when Beardsley
+worked--he was everywhere--but for answer he only laughed gleefully,
+his pose being that he never worked nor had need to work. He had as yet
+no footing in the houses of the great; and it was fortunate for his art
+that he had not, for he was steeping himself in all that touched or
+enhanced that art.
+
+Beardsley, when he sat down to his table to create art, came to his
+effort with no cant about inspiration. He set himself an idea to
+fulfil, and the paper on which he rough-pencilled that idea was the
+only sketch he made for the completed design--when the pen and ink had
+next done their work, the pencil vanished under the eliminating rubber.
+The well-known pencil sketch of _A Girl_ owned by Mr. Evans shows
+Beardsley selecting the firm line of the face from amidst the rough
+rhythm of his scrawls.
+
+A great deal has been made of Beardsley’s only working by candlelight;
+as a matter of fact there is nothing unusual in an artist, whether of
+the pen or the brush, who does not employ colour, making night into
+day. It is an affair of temperament, though of course Beardsley was
+quite justified in posing as a genius thereby if it helped him to
+recognition.
+
+Beardsley’s career had made it impossible for him to work except at
+night; and by the time his day was free to him he was set by habit into
+working at night. There would be nothing unnatural in his shutting
+out the daylight and lighting his candles if he were seized by the
+mood to work by day. He shared with far greater artists than he the
+dislike of being seen at work, and is said to have shut out even his
+mother and sister when drawing; and, like Turner, when caught at the
+job he hurriedly hid away the tools of his craft; pens, ink, paper,
+and drawing upon the paper, were all thrust away at once. No one has
+ever been known to see him at work. He did not draw from a model. We
+can judge better by his unfinished designs--than from any record by
+eyewitnesses--that he finished his drawing in ink on the piece of paper
+on which he began it, without sketch or study--that he began by vague
+pencil scrawls and rough lines to indicate the general rhythm and
+composition and balance of the thing as a whole--that he then drew
+in with firmer pencil lines the main design--and then inked in the
+pen-line and masses.
+
+[Illustration: PENCIL SKETCH OF A CHILD]
+
+Now, Beardsley being a born poser, and seeing that the philistine mind
+of the hack-journalist was focused on getting a “story,” astutely made
+much of his only being able to work by candlelight as he drew the
+journalistic romance-mongering eyes to the two candlesticks of the
+Empire period, and encouraged their suggestion that he brought forth
+the masterpiece only under their spell. It was good copy; and it spread
+him by advertisement. Besides, it sounded fearsomely “original,” and
+held a taint of genius. And there was something almost deliciously
+wicked in the subtle confession: “I am happiest when the lamps of the
+town have been lit.” He must be at all costs “the devil of a fellow.”
+
+Beardsley arranged the room, in his father’s and mother’s house, which
+was his first studio so that it should fit his career as artist. He
+received his visitors in this scarlet room, seated at a small table on
+which stood two tall tapering candlesticks--the candlesticks without
+which he could not work. And his affectations and artificialities of
+pose and conversation were at this time almost painful. But he was very
+young and very ambitious, and had not yet achieved much else than pose
+whereon to lean for reputation.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+His rapid increase of power--and one now begins to understand
+Vallance’s enthusiasm--induced Vallance to make a last bid to win the
+favour of Morris for the gifted Aubrey. It was about Yuletide of 1892,
+half a year after Morris’s rebuff had so deeply wounded the youth,
+that Vallance, who could not persuade Beardsley to move another foot
+towards Morris’s house a second time, induced the young fellow to let
+him have a printed proof from the _Morte d’Arthur_ of _The Lady of the
+Lake telling Arthur of the sword Excalibur_ to show to Morris. Several
+of Morris’s friends were present when Vallance arrived. Now again we
+must try and get into Morris’s skin. He was shown a black and white
+decoration for the printed page made by a young fellow who, a few
+months before, had been so utterly ignorant of the world-shattering
+revolution in bookmaking at the Kelmscott Press that he had actually
+offered his services on the strength of a trumpery grotesque in
+poor imitation of a Japanese drawing, which of course would have
+fitted quaintly with Caxton’s printed books! but here, by Thor and
+Hammersmith, was the selfsame young coxscomb, mastering the Kelmscott
+idea and in one fell drawing surpassing it and making the whole
+achievement of Morris’s earnest workers look tricky and meretricious
+and unutterably dull! Of course there was a storm of anger from Morris.
+
+Morris’s hot indignation at what he called “an act of usurpation”
+which he could not permit, revealed to Vallance the sad fact that any
+hope of these two men working together was futile. “A man ought to do
+his own work,” roared Morris, quite forgetting how he was as busy as
+a burglar filching from Caxton and mediæval Europe. However, so hotly
+did Morris feel about the whole business that it was only at Sir Edward
+Burne-Jones’s earnest urging that Morris was prevented from writing an
+angry remonstrance to Dent.
+
+[Illustration: HOW QUEEN GUENEVER MADE HER A NUN
+
+_from “Le Morte D’Arthur”_]
+
+How Morris fulfilled his vaunted aim of lifting printing to its old
+glory by attacking any and every body else who likewise strove, is not
+easy to explain. But here we may pause for a moment to discuss a point
+much misunderstood in Beardsley’s career. Vallance, a man of high
+integrity and noble ideals, sadly deplores the loss both to Beardsley
+and to Morris himself through Morris treating the young fellow as a
+rival instead of an ally. But whatever loss it may have been to Morris,
+it was as a fact a vast gain to Beardsley. Beardsley pricked the bubble
+of the mediæval “fake” in books; but had he instead entered into the
+Morris circle he would have begun and ended as a mediocrity. He had
+the craftsmanship to surpass the Kelmscott Press; but he had in his
+being no whit in common with mediævalism. Art has nothing to do with
+beauty or ugliness or the things that Morris and his age mistook for
+art. It is a far vaster and mightier significance than all that. And
+the tragic part of the lad’s destiny lay in this: he had either to sink
+his powers in the “art-fake” that his clean-soul’d and noble-hearted
+friend took to be art, or he had to pursue the vital and true art
+of uttering what emotions life most intensely revealed to him, even
+though, in the doing, he had to wallow with swine. And let us have no
+cant about it: the “mediæval” decorations for the _Morte d’Arthur_ were
+soon revealing that overwhelming eroticism, that inquisition into sex,
+which dominated Beardsley’s whole artistic soul from the day he turned
+his back on the city and became an artist. Beardsley would never have
+been, could never have been, a great artist in the Morris circle, or
+in seeking to restore a dead age through mediæval research. That there
+was no need for him to go to the other extreme and associate with men
+of questionable habits, low codes of honour, and licentious life, is
+quite true; but the sad part of the business was, as we shall see, that
+it was precisely just such men who alone enabled the young fellow to
+create his master-work where others would have let him starve and the
+music die in him unsung.
+
+William Morris was to die in the October of 1896, four years
+thereafter, but he was to live long enough to see the lad he envied
+outrival him in his “mediæval fake”--find himself--and give to the
+world in _The Savoy_ a series of decorations that have made his name
+immortal and placed his art amongst the supreme achievement of the
+ages, where William Morris’s vaunted decorated printed page is become
+an elaborate boredom.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Morris was not the only one who baffled the efforts of Vallance to get
+the young Beardsley a hearing. By John Lane, fantastically enough, he
+was also to be rejected! Beardsley was always full of vast schemes and
+plans; one of these at the moment was the illustrating of Meredith’s
+_Shaving of Shagpat_--a desire to which he returned and on which he
+harped again and again. Vallance, hoping that John Lane, a member of
+the firm of Elkin Mathews and John Lane, then new and unconventional
+publishers, would become the bridge to achievement, brought about
+a meeting between Beardsley and John Lane at a small gathering
+at Vallance’s rooms as Yuletide drew near. But John Lane was not
+impressed; and nothing came of it. It was rather an irony of fate that
+Beardsley, who resented this rejection by John Lane, for some reason,
+with considerable bitterness, was in a twelvemonth to be eagerly sought
+after by the same John Lane to their mutual success, increase in
+reputation, triumph, and prodigious advertisement.
+
+However neither the frown of William Morris, nor the icy aloofness of
+Watts, nor the indifference of John Lane, could chill the ardour of the
+young Aubrey Beardsley. He was free. He had two big commissions. His
+health greatly improved. He was happy in his work. Having mastered the
+possibilities and the limitations of the Kelmscott book decoration,
+he concentrated on surpassing it. At once his line began to put on
+strength. And the Japanese convention tickled him hugely--here he could
+use his line without troubling about floor or ceiling or perspective in
+which to place his figures. He could relieve the monotony of the heavy
+_Morte d’Arthur_ convention by drawing fantasies in this Japanesque
+vein for _Bon Mots_, both conventions rooted whimsically enough in
+Burne-Jonesesques. And so it came that his first half-year as an artist
+saw him pouring out work of a quality never before even hinted at as
+being latent in him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Such then was the state of affairs when, with the inevitable black
+portfolio containing work really worth looking at under his arm, the
+young fellow in his twenty-first year was to be led by Vallance into
+the inestimable good fortune of meeting a man who was to bring his
+achievement into the public eye and champion his interests at every
+hand his life long.
+
+The year before the lad Beardsley left the Brighton Grammar School to
+enter upon a commercial career in the city, in 1887 there had left
+the city and entered upon a literary life, as subeditor of _The Art
+Journal_, Lewis C. Hind. Five years of such apprenticeship done, Hind
+had given up the magazine in 1892 in order to start a new art magazine
+for students. Hind had had a copy privately printed as a sort of
+“dummy,” which he showed to his friend and fellow-clubman John Lane,
+then on his part becoming a publisher. It so happened that a very
+astute and successful business-man in the Japanese trade called Charles
+Holme who lived at the Red House at Bexley Heath, the once home of
+William Morris, had an ambition to create an art magazine. John Lane,
+the friend of both men, brought them together--and in the December
+of 1892 the contract was signed between Charles Holme and Lewis
+Hind--and _The Studio_, as it was christened by Hind to Holme’s great
+satisfaction, began to take shape. Hind saw the commercial flair of
+Charles Holme as his best asset--Holme saw Hind in the editorial chair
+as _his_ best asset.
+
+So the new year of 1893 dawned. It was the habit of Lewis Hind to go
+of a Sunday afternoon to the tea-time gatherings of the literary and
+artistic friends of Wilfred and Alice Meynell at their house in Palace
+Court; and it was on one of these occasions, early in the January of
+1893, that Aymer Vallance entered with a tall slender “hatchet-faced”
+pallid youth. Hind, weary of pictures and drawings over which he had
+been poring for weeks in his search for subjects for his new magazine,
+was listening peacefully to the music of Vernon Blackburn who was
+playing one of his own songs at the piano, when the stillness of the
+room was broken by the entry of the two new visitors. In an absent
+mood he suddenly became aware that Vallance had moved to his side with
+his young friend. He looked up at the youth who stood by Vallance’s
+elbow and became aware of a lanky figure with a big nose, and yellow
+hair plastered down in a “quiff” or fringe across his forehead much in
+the style of Phil May--a pallid silent young man, but self-confident,
+self-assured, alert and watchful--with the inevitable black portfolio
+under his arm; the insurance clerk, Aubrey Beardsley. Hind, disinclined
+for art babble, weary of undiscovered “geniuses” being foisted upon
+him, but melting under the hot enthusiasm of Vallance, at last asked
+the pale youth to show him his drawings. On looking through Beardsley’s
+portfolio, Hind at once decided that here at any rate was work of
+genius. Now let us remember that this sophisticated youth of the blasé
+air was not yet twenty-one. In that portfolio Hind tells us were the
+two frontispieces for _Le Morte_ _d’Arthur_, the _Siegfried Act II_,
+the _Birthday of Madame Cigale_--_Les Revenants de Musique_--“Some
+_Salome_ drawings”--with several chapter-headings and tailpieces for
+the _Morte d’Arthur_. Hind’s memory probably tricked him as to the
+_Salome_ drawings; for, in refreshing his memory, likely as not, he
+looked at the first number of _The Studio_ published three months
+later. Wilde’s _Salome_ did not see print until February, a full month
+afterwards and was quite unknown.
+
+However, Hind at once offered the pages of his new art venture, _The
+Studio_, to the delighted youth. What was more, he arranged that
+Beardsley should bring his drawings the next morning to _The Studio_
+offices. When he did so, Charles Holme was quick to support Hind;
+indeed, to encourage the youngster, he there and then bought the
+drawings themselves from the thrilled Aubrey.
+
+Hind commissioned Joseph Pennell, as being one of the widest-read
+critics, to write the appreciation of the designs, and blazon Beardsley
+abroad--and whilst Pennell was frankly more than a little perplexed
+by all the enthusiasm poured into his ears, he undertook the job. But
+Hind, though he remained to the end the lad’s friend and greatly liked
+him, was not to be his editor after all. William Waldorf Astor, the
+millionaire, had bought the daily _Pall Mall Gazette_ and the weekly
+_Pall Mall Budget_ and was launching a new monthly to be called _The
+Pall Mall Magazine_. Lord Brownlow’s nephew, Harry Cust, appointed
+editor of the _Pall Mall Gazette_, asked Hind to become editor of the
+weekly _Budget_ at a handsome salary; and Hind, thus having to look
+about of a sudden for someone to replace himself as editor of the new
+art magazine, about to be launched, found Gleeson White to take command
+of _The Studio_ in his stead. But even as he set Gleeson White in the
+vacant editorial chair, Hind took Beardsley with him also to what
+was to be Hind’s three years editorship of the _Pall Mall Budget_,
+for which, unfortunately, the young fellow wrought little but such
+unmitigated trash as must have somewhat dumbfounded Hind.
+
+So the first number of _The Studio_ was to appear in the April of 1893
+glorifying a wonderful youth--his name Aubrey Beardsley!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was thus also, through Lewis Hind, that the young Beardsley had the
+good fortune to meet Gleeson White. Of the men who made the artistic
+and literary life of London at this time, Gleeson White was one of
+the largest of vision, the soundest in taste, the most generous in
+encouragement. A strangely modest man, he was said to have invented
+much of the wit of the ’nineties given to others’ tongues, for he had
+the strange conceit of crediting the man with uttering the witticism
+who looked as if he ought to have said it. That was usurpation
+which men like Whistler and Wilde could forgive--and they forgave
+Gleeson White much. Gleeson White, who was well known in the Arts and
+Crafts movement of the day that hinged on Morris, leaped with joy at
+Hind’s offer to make him editor of a magazine that was to voice the
+aspirations and to blaze forth the achievements of the Arts and Crafts
+men.
+
+On the eve of publication, Hind and Gleeson White asked for a cover
+design for _The Studio_ from the much gratified youth, who went
+home thrilled with the prospect that set his soul on fire--here
+was _réclame_! as he always preferred to call being advertised, or
+what the studios call being “boosted.” Indeed, was not Beardsley to
+appear in the first number of _The Studio_ after Frank Brangwyn, then
+beginning to come to the front, in a special article devoted to his
+work by Pennell, the most vocal of critics, with illustrations from
+the portfolio in his several styles--the Japanesque, and the mediæval
+_Morte d’Arthur_ blackletter? Was it not to be a tribute to “a new
+illustrator”? In Pennell there stepped into the young Beardsley’s life
+a man who could make his voice heard, and, thanks to Hind, he was to
+champion the lad through rain and shine, through black and sunny days.
+And what was of prodigious value to Beardsley, Pennell did not gush
+irrelevantly nor over-rate his worth as did so many--he gave it just
+and fair and full value.
+
+All the same we must not make too much of Beardsley’s indebtedness
+to the first number of _The Studio_ in bringing him before the
+public. Pennell had the advantage of seeing a portfolio which really
+did contain very remarkable work--at the same time it was scarcely
+world-shattering--and it is to Pennell’s eternal credit for artistic
+honesty and critical judgment that he did not advertise it at anything
+more than its solid value. Pennell was writing for a new magazine of
+arts and crafts; and his fierce championship of process-reproduction
+was as much a part of his aim as was Beardsley’s art--and all of
+us who have been saved from the vile debauching of our line-work
+by the average wood-engravers owe it largely to Pennell that
+process-reproduction won through--and not least of all Beardsley. What
+Pennell says about Beardsley is sober and just and appreciative; but it
+was when Beardsley developed far vaster powers and rose to a marvellous
+style that Pennell championed him, most fitly, to the day he lay down
+and died.
+
+The first number of _The Studio_ did not appear until the April of
+1893; it was the first public recognition of Aubrey Beardsley it is
+true; but an utterly ridiculous legend has grown around _The Studio_
+that it made Beardsley famous. It did absolutely nothing of the kind.
+_The Studio_ itself was no particular success, far less any article in
+it. Tom, Dick, and Harry, did not understand it; were not interested
+greatly in the arts or crafts; and particularly were they bored by
+mediæval stiffness, dinginess, gloom, and solemn uncomfortable pomp.
+Even the photographers had not at that time “gone into oak.” It was
+only in our little narrow artistic and literary world--and a very
+narrow inner circle at that--where _The Studio_ caused any talk, and
+Beardsley interested not very excitedly. We had grown rather blasé
+to mediævalism; had begun to find it out; and the Japanesque was a
+somewhat dinted toy--we preferred the Japanese masterpieces of the
+Japanese even to the fine bastard Japanesques of Whistler. So that,
+even in studio and literary salon, and at the tea-tables of the very
+earnest people with big red or yellow ties, untidy corduroy suits, and
+bilious aspirations after beauty, Beardsley at best was only one of the
+many subjects when he was a subject at all. It was bound to be so--he
+had done no great work as far as the public knew. Lewis Hind, who at
+the New Year had gone from _The Studio_ offices to edit the _Pall
+Mall Budget_, in a fit of generous enthusiasm commissioned Beardsley
+to make caricatures or portrait-sketches at the play or opera or the
+like; and from the February of 1893 for some few weeks, Beardsley,
+utterly incompetent for the journalistic job, unfortunately damaged his
+reputation and nearly brought it to the gutter with a series of the
+most wretched drawings imaginable--drawings without one redeeming shred
+of value--work almost inconceivable as being from the same hands that
+were decorating the _Morte d’Arthur_, which however the public had not
+yet seen, for it did not begin to appear in print until the mid-year.
+But, as a matter of fact, most of the designs for _Morte d’Arthur_
+were made by the time that Beardsley began his miserable venture in
+the _Pall Mall Budget_. The first volume of _Bon Mots_ appeared in
+the April of 1893--the _Sydney Smith and Sheridan_ volume--although
+few heard of or saw the little book, and none paid it respect. It was
+pretty poor stuff.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now, though the _Morte d’Arthur_ was in large part done before _The
+Studio_ eulogy by Pennell appeared in this April of 1893, otherwise
+the eulogy would never have been written, it is well to cast a
+glance at Beardsley’s art as it was first revealed to an indifferent
+public in _The Studio_ article. There are examples from the _Morte
+d’Arthur_, of which the very fine chapter-heading of the knights in
+combat on foot amongst the dandelion-like leaves of a forest, with
+their sword-like decoration, was enough to have made any reputation.
+The most mediocre design of the lot, a tedious piece of Renaissance
+mimicry of Mantegna called _The Procession of Joan of Arc entering
+Orleans_ was curiously enough the favourite work of Beardsley’s own
+choice a year gone by when he made it--so far had he now advanced
+beyond this commonplace untidy emptiness! Yet the writers on art
+seem to have been more impressed by this futility than by the far
+more masterly _Morte d’Arthur_ decorations. If the writers were at
+sea, the public can scarce be blamed. The _Siegfried Act II_ of
+mid-1892, which Beardsley had given to his patron Burne-Jones, shows
+excellent, if weird and fantastic, combination by Beardsley of his
+Japanesque and Burne-Jonesesque mimicry--it is his typically early or
+“hairy-line” Japanesque, hesitant in stroke and thin in quality. The
+_Birthday of Madame_ _Cigale_ and _Les Revenants de Musique_ show
+the Japanesque more asserting itself over the mock mediæval, and are
+akin to _Le Debris d’un Poète_ and _La Femme Incomprise_. But there
+was also a Japanesque in _The Studio_ which was to have an effect on
+Beardsley’s destiny that he little foresaw! There had been published
+in the February of 1893 in French the play called _Salome_ by Oscar
+Wilde, which made an extraordinary sensation in literary circles and
+in the Press. Throughout the newspapers was much controversy about the
+leopard-like ecstasy of Salome when the head of John the Baptist has
+been given to her on a salver: “J’ai baisé ta bouche, Iokanaan; j’ai
+baisé ta bouche.” Beardsley, struck by the lines, made his now famous
+Japanesque drawing, just in time to be included in _The Studio_ which
+was to appear in April. It was this design that, a few weeks later,
+decided Elkin Mathews and John Lane that in Beardsley they had found
+the destined illustrator of the English _Salome_, translated by Lord
+Alfred Douglas, which was soon to appear. In that _Salome_ was to be a
+marvellous significance for Aubrey Beardsley.
+
+It is interesting to note in surveying the first number of _The
+Studio_, the rapid development of Beardsley’s art from the fussy
+flourishy design of this _Salome_ drawing to the more severe and
+restrained edition of the same design that was so soon to appear in the
+book. The hairy Japanesque line has departed.
+
+Note also another fact: The title of the article published in _The
+Studio_ first number shows that in March 1893 when it was written at
+latest, Beardsley had decided to drop his middle name of Vincent;
+and the V forthwith disappears from the initials and signature to
+his work--the last time it was employed was on the indifferent large
+pencil drawing of _Sandro Botticelli_ made in 1893 about the time
+that _The_ _Studio_ was to appear, as Vallance tells us, having been
+made by Beardsley to prove his own contention that an artist made his
+figures unconsciously like himself, whereupon at Vallance’s challenge
+he proceeded to build a Sandro Botticelli from Botticelli’s paintings.
+Vallance is unlikely to have made a mistake about the date, but the
+work has the hesitation and the lack of drawing and of decision of the
+year before.
+
+Above all, an absolutely new style has been born. Faked Mediævalism is
+dead--and buried. Whistler’s Peacock Room has triumphed. Is it possible
+that Beardsley’s visit to the Peacock Room was at this time, and not
+so early as 1891? At any rate Beardsley is now to mimic Whistler’s
+peacocks so gorgeously painted on the shutters on the Peacock Room as
+he had heretofore imitated Burne-Jones.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By his twenty-first birthday, then, Beardsley had practically done
+with the _Morte d’Arthur_; and it was only by the incessant prayers
+and supplications of Dent and the solemn urging of Frederick Evans
+to the young fellow to fulfil his word of honour and his bond, that
+Beardsley was persuaded, grudgingly, to make another design for it.
+He was wearied to tears by the book, and had utterly cast mediævalism
+from him before he was through it. He was now intensely and feverishly
+concentrated on the development of the Japanesque. And he was for
+ever poring over the Greek vase-paintings at the British Museum. And
+another point must be pronounced, if we are to understand Beardsley;
+with returning bodily vigour he was encouraging that erotic mania
+so noticeable in gifted consumptives, so that eroticism became the
+dominant emotion and significance in life to him. He was steeping
+himself in study of phallic worship--and when all’s said, the worship
+of sex has held a very important place in the earlier civilizations,
+and is implicit in much that is not so early.
+
+It was indeed fortunate for Dent that he had procured most of the
+decorations he wanted for the _Morte d’Arthur_ in the young fellow’s
+first few months of vigorous enthusiasm for the book in the dying end
+of the year of 1892, to which half year the _Morte d’Arthur_ almost
+wholly belongs in Beardsley’s achievement. Dent was thereby enabled
+to launch on the publication of the parts in the June of 1893, about
+the time that Beardsley, changing his home, was to be turning his back
+on mediævalism and Burne-Jonesism for ever. It is obvious to such as
+search the book that the _Morte d’Arthur_ was never completed--we find
+designs doing duty towards the end again more than once--but Dent had
+secured enough to make this possible without offensive reiteration.
+
+There appeared in the _Pall Mall Magazine_ for June 1893, drawn in
+April 1893, as the first _Studio_ number was appearing, a design known
+as _The Neophyte_, or to give its full affected name, “_Of a Neophyte,
+and how the Black Art was revealed unto him by the Fiend Asomuel_”;
+it was followed in the July number by a drawing of May 1893 called
+_The Kiss of Judas_--both drawings reveal an unmistakable change
+in handling, and the _Neophyte_ a remarkable firmness of andform,
+and a strange hauntingness and atmosphere heretofore unexpressed.
+Beardsley had striven to reach it again and again in his Burne-Jonesque
+frontispiece to the _Morte d’Arthur_ and kindred works in his “hairy
+line”; but the work of Carlos Schwabe and other so-called symbolists
+was being much talked of at this time, and several French illustrators
+were reaching quite wonderful effects through it--it was not lost on
+Beardsley’s quick mind, especially its grotesque possibilities.
+
+[Illustration: “OF A NEOPHYTE AND HOW THE BLACK ART WAS REVEALED UNTO
+HIM”]
+
+It is easy for the layman and the business man to blame Beardsley
+for shrinking from fulfilling his bond as regards a contract for a
+long sequence of drawings to illustrate a book; but it is only just
+to recognise that it requires a frantic and maddening effort of will
+in any artist to keep going back and employing a treatment that he
+has left behind him and rejected, and when he has advanced to such a
+handling as _The Neophyte_. This difficulty for Beardsley will be more
+obvious to the lay mind a little further on.
+
+It is a peculiar irony that attributes Beardsley’s _Morte d’Arthur_
+phase to 1893-94; for whilst it is true that it was from mid-1893 that
+the book began to be published, Beardsley had turned his back upon it
+for months--indeed his principal drawings had been made for it in late
+1892, and only with difficulty could they be extracted from him even
+in early 1893! The second of the two elaborate drawings in his “hairy
+line” called _The Questing Beast_ is dated by Beardsley himself “March
+8, 1893”--as for 1894, it would have been impossible for Beardsley
+by that time to make such a drawing. Even as it is, the early 1893
+decorations differ utterly from the more mediæval or Burne-Jonesesques
+decorations of late 1892; and by the time the _Morte d’Arthur_ began
+to be given to the public, Beardsley, as we have seen, had completely
+rejected his whole Burne-Jones convention.
+
+The two cover-designs for _The Studio No. I_ in April 1893 were
+obviously drawn at the same time as the design for the covers of the
+_Morte d’Arthur_--in the early Spring of 1893. They could well be
+exchanged without the least loss. They practically write Finis to the
+_Morte d’Arthur_ drawings. They make a good full stop to the record of
+Beardsley’s achievement in his twentieth year.
+
+There is a story told of Dent’s anxieties over Beardsley’s exasperating
+procrastination in delivering the later drawings for the _Morte
+d’Arthur_ on the eve of its appearing in numbers. Dent called on Mrs.
+Beardsley to beg her influence with Beardsley to get on with the work.
+Mrs. Beardsley went upstairs at once to see Beardsley who was still in
+bed, and to remonstrate with him on Dent’s behalf. Beardsley, but half
+awake, lazily answered his mother’s chiding with:
+
+  There was a young man with a salary
+  Who had to do drawings for Malory;
+  When they asked him for more, he replied “Why? Sure
+  You’ve enough, as it is, for a gallery.”
+
+As Beardsley’s self chosen master, Watteau, had played with mimicry
+of the Chinese genius in his Chinoiseries, so Beardsley at twenty,
+faithful to Watteau, played with mimicry of the Japanese genius.
+And as Whistler had set the vogue in his Japanesques by adopting a
+Japanesque mark of a butterfly for signature, so Beardsley, not to be
+outdone in originality, now invented for himself his famous “Japanesque
+mark” of the three candles, with three flames--in the more elaborate
+later marks adding rounded puffs of candle-smoke--or as Beardsley
+himself called it, his “trademark.” To Beardsley his candles were as
+important a part of the tools of his craftsmanship as were his pen and
+paper and chinese ink; and it was but a fitting tribute to his light
+that he should make of it the emblem of his signature. But whether
+the “Japanesque mark” be candles or not, from the time he began to
+employ the Japanesque convention alongside of his mediævalism, for
+three years, until as we shall see he was expelled from _The Yellow
+Book_--his twentieth, twenty-first and twenty-second years--we shall
+find him employing the “Japanesque mark,” sometimes in addition to his
+name. So it is well to dwell upon it here.
+
+The early “Japanesque mark” of Beardsley’s twentieth year (mid 1892 to
+mid-1893) was as we have seen, stunted, crude, and ill-shaped, and he
+employed it indifferently and incongruously on any type of his designs
+whether _Morte d’Arthur_ mediævalism or the Japanesque grotesques of
+his _Bon Mots_. And we have seen that it was in the middle of his
+twentieth year--he last used it in fact in the February of 1893--that
+he dropped the initial V for Vincent out of his initials and signature.
+He had employed A. V. B. in his Formative years. He signs henceforth as
+A. B. or A. Beardsley or even as Aubrey B.
+
+In mid-1893, at twenty-one, we are about to see him launch upon his
+_Salome_ designs, as weary of the _Bon Mots_ grotesques as of the
+_Morte d’Arthur_ mediævalism; and we shall see his “Japanesque mark”
+become long, slender, and graceful, often elaborate--the V quite
+departed from his signature.
+
+I have dwelt at length upon Beardsley’s “Japanesque mark,” or as he
+called it, his “trademark,” since his many forgers make the most
+amusing blunders by using the “Japanesque mark” in particular on
+forgeries of later styles when he had wholly abandoned it!
+
+[Illustration]
+
+From mid-1892 to mid-1893, Beardsley then had advanced in craftsmanship
+by leaps and bounds, nevertheless he was unknown at twenty-one except
+to a small artistic circle. The _Bon Mots_ grotesques, mostly done in
+the last half of 1892, began to appear, the first volume, _Sydney Smith
+and Sheridan_, in the April of 1893; the second volume at the year’s
+end, _Lamb and Douglas Jerrold_, in December 1893; and the third, the
+last volume, _Foote and Hooke_, in the February of 1894. The _Morte
+d’Arthur_ began to be published in parts in June 1893. The feverish
+creation of the mediæval designs in the late part of 1892 alongside of
+the _Bon Mots_ grotesques had exhausted Beardsley’s enthusiasm, and his
+style evaporated with the growth of his weariness--by mid-1893 he was
+finding the _Morte d’Arthur_ “very long-winded.” And what chilled him
+most, he found the public indifferent to both--yet Beardsley knew full
+well that his whole interest lay in publicity.
+
+It has been complained against Beardsley that he broke his bond. This
+is a larger question and a serious question--but it _is_ a question.
+It depends wholly on whether he could fulfil his bond artistically, as
+well as on whether that bond were a just bargain. We will come to that.
+But it must be stressed that just as Beardsley had rapidly developed
+his craftsmanship and style during his work upon the mediævalism of the
+_Morte d’Arthur_, by that time he came near to the end of the book
+he had advanced quite beyond the style he had created for it; so also
+his next development was as rapid, and by the time he is at the end of
+his new Japanese phase in _Salome_ we shall see him again advancing so
+rapidly to a newer development of his style that he grew weary of the
+_Salome_ before he completed it, and threw in a couple of illustrations
+as makeweight which are utterly alien to the work and disfigure it. And
+yet these two drawings were made immediately after working upon this
+_Salome_, and were thrown in only out of a certain sense of resentment
+owing to the suppression of two designs not deemed to be circumspect
+enough. But Beardsley did not refuse to make new drawings in key
+with the rest--he had simply advanced to a new style quite alien to
+_Salome_, and he found he could not go back. This will be clearer when
+we come to the _Salome_.
+
+So precisely with the _Morte d’Arthur_; even the last decorations he
+made were more akin to his Greek Vase style in _The Yellow Book_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Before we leave the _Morte d’Arthur_, and the difficulties with
+Beardsley in which it ended, let us remember that artists and authors
+are often prone to ingratitude towards those who have led their steps
+to the ladder of Fame--and Beardsley was no exception. It was J. M.
+Dent who opened the gates for Beardsley to that realm which was to
+bring him the bays. Had it not been for Dent he would have died with
+his song wholly unsung--there would have been for him no _Studio_
+“réclame,” no _Yellow Book_, no _Salome_, no _Savoy_. Dent, employing
+with rare vision the budding genius of the youth, brought forth an
+edition of Sir Thomas Malory’s immortal _Morte d’Arthur_ which is a
+triumph for English bookmaking--he gave us the supreme edition that
+can never be surpassed by mortal hands--he did so in a form within the
+reach of the ordinary man--and in the doing he made the much vaunted
+work of William Morris and his fellow-craftsmen appear second-rate,
+mechanical, and over-ornate toys for millionaires.
+
+[Illustration: HEADPIECE FROM “LE MORTE D’ARTHUR”]
+
+[Illustration: THE PEACOCK SKIRT
+
+_from “Salome”_]
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+THE JAPANESQUES
+
+Mid-1893 to the New Year of 1894--Twenty-One
+
+“SALOME”
+
+
+Entered into the garden of his desire, by mid-1893 Beardsley was on the
+edge of manhood.
+
+We have seen that a year or two gone by, Beardsley is said to have
+paid a visit to Whistler’s notorious Peacock Room at Prince’s Gate. He
+really knew Japanese art in but its cheapest forms and in superficial
+fashion, and the bastard Japanesque designs for the decoration of this
+mock-Japanesque room greatly influenced Beardsley without much critical
+challenge from him, especially the tedious attenuated furniture and the
+thin square bars of the wooden fitments. They appear in his designs
+of interiors for some time after this. His Japanesque _Caricature of
+Whistler_ on a seat, catching butterflies, is of this time.
+
+Now, the Letter to his musical friend Scotson Clark, describing his
+visit to Whistler’s Peacock Room, is evidently undated, but it is put
+down to the year of 1891. It may be so. But I suspect that it was of
+the early part of 1893--at any rate, if earlier, it is curious that
+its effect on Beardsley’s art lay in abeyance for a couple of years,
+and then suddenly, in the Spring and Summer of 1893, his art and
+craftsmanship burst forth in designs of the _Salome_ founded frankly
+upon the convention of the superb peacocks on the shutters painted by
+Whistler for the Peacock Room. Why should this undisguised mimicry of
+Whistler have been delayed for two years?
+
+But--as the slyly hung indecent Japanese prints upon his walls at this
+time revealed to the seeing eye--it was now to the work of the better
+Japanese masters that he chiefly owed his passing pupillage to Japan.
+The erotic designs of the better Japanese artists, not being saleable
+for London drawing-rooms, were low-priced and within Beardsley’s reach.
+His own intellectual and moral eroticism was fiercely attracted by
+these erotic Japanese designs; indeed it was the sexualism of such
+Japanese masters that drew Beardsley to them quite as much as their
+wonderful rhythmic power to express sexual moods and adventures. It
+was from the time that Beardsley began to collect such Japanese prints
+by Utamaro and the rest that he gave rein to those leering features
+and libidinous ecstasies that became so dominating a factor of his
+Muse. These suggestive designs Beardsley himself used to call by the
+sophisticated title of “galants.” The Greek vase-paintings were to add
+to this lewd suggestiveness an increased power later on.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a fortunate thing for Beardsley that Dent who had begun to
+publish the _Morte d’Arthur_ in parts in the June of 1893, as it had
+called attention to his illustrations; for, Elkin Mathews and John Lane
+now commissioned the young fellow to decorate the Englished edition
+of Oscar Wilde’s _Salome_, translated by Lord Alfred Douglas. The
+young fellow leaped at it--not only as giving him scope for fantastic
+designs but even more from the belief that the critics hotly disputing
+over Wilde’s play already, he would come into the public eye. Elkin
+Mathews and John Lane showed remarkable judgment in their choice,
+founding their decision on the Japanesque drawing that Beardsley
+had made--either on reading the French edition, or on reading the
+widespread criticisms of the French editon by Wilde published in
+the February of 1893--illustrating the lines that raised so hot a
+controversy in the Press, “j’ai baisé ta bouche, Iokanaan; j’ai baisé
+ta bouche,” which as we have seen had appeared as one of the several
+illustrations to Pennell’s appreciation of “A New Illustrator” at the
+birth of _The Studio_ in the April of 1893, soon thereafter.
+
+Beardsley flung himself at the work with eager enthusiasm, turning his
+back on all that he had done or undertaken to do. Whatever bitterness
+he may have felt at his disappointment with John Lane, a year before,
+was now mollified by the recognition of his art in the commission for
+_Salome_.
+
+Now, it should be realised that Elkin Mathews and John Lane, at the
+Sign of the Bodley Head in Vigo Street, were developing a publishing
+house quite unlike the ordinary publisher’s business of that day--they
+were encouraging the younger men or the less young who found scant
+support from the conventional makers of books; and they were bent on
+producing _belles lettres_ in an attractive and picturesque form.
+This all greatly appealed to Beardsley. He was modern of the moderns.
+The heavy antique splendour and solemnities of the Kelmscott reprints
+repulsed him nearly as much as the crass philistinism of the hack
+publishers.
+
+On the other hand, Elkin Mathews and John Lane took Beardsley rather
+on trust--the _Morte d’Arthur_ and the _Bon Mots_ were far from what
+they sought. And again let us give them the credit of remembering that
+Beardsley was but little known.
+
+It would be difficult to imagine a man less competent to create the
+true atmosphere of the times and court of King Herod than Oscar
+Wilde--but he could achieve an Oxford-Athenian fantasy hung on Herodias
+as a peg. It would be as difficult to imagine a man less competent than
+Aubrey Beardsley to paint the true atmosphere of the times of King
+Herod--but he knew it, and acted accordingly. What he could do, and
+did do, was to weave a series of fantastic decorations about Wilde’s
+play which were as delightfully alien to the subject as was the play.
+Beardsley imagined it as a Japanese fantasy, as a bright Cockney would
+conceive Japan; he placed his drama in the Japan of Whistler’s Peacock
+Room; he did not attempt to illustrate the play by scenes, indeed
+was not greatly interested in the play, any more than in the _Morte
+d’Arthur_, but was wholly concerned with creating decorative schemes
+as a musician might create impressions in sound as stirred in his
+imagination by the suggestion of moods in the play--and he proceeded
+to lampoon the writer of it and to make a sequence of grotesques that
+pronounced the eroticism of the whole conception. The Wardour-Street
+jumble-sale of Greek terminal gods, Japanese costumes, and all the
+rest of it, is part of the fun. Beardsley revels in the farce. But his
+beheaded John the Baptist is without a touch of tragic power.
+
+It was a habit of Beardsley’s champions, as well as an admission, if
+reluctantly granted, by his bitterest assailants, throughout the Press,
+to praise Beardsley’s line. What exactly they meant, most would have
+been hard put to it to explain--it was a sort of philistine literary
+or journalistic concession to the volapuk of the studios. As the fact
+of line is perhaps more obvious in the _Salome_ drawings than in the
+_Savoy_, since the _Salome_ designs are largely line unrelated to mass,
+there are even so-called critics to be found who place the _Salome_
+drawings at the topmost height of Beardsley’s achievement to this day!
+
+Most of this talk of Beardsley’s line was sheer literary cant, but
+happened to coincide with a reality. It is in the achievement of his
+line that Beardsley steps amongst the immortals, uttering his genius
+thereby. But the mere fact that any writer instances the _Salome_
+drawings in proof of the wonderful achievement of Beardsley’s line
+condemns him as a futile appraiser. Beardsley, by intense and dogged
+application and consummate taste, mastered the pen-line until this,
+the most mulish instrument of the artist’s craftsmanship, at last
+surrendered its secrets to him, lost its hard rigidity, and yielded
+itself to his hand’s desire; and he came to employ it with so exquisite
+a mastery that he could compel it at will to yield music like the clear
+sustained notes of a violin. His line became emotional--grave or gay.
+But he had not achieved that complete mastery when he undertook, nor
+when he completed, the _Salome_, wherein his line is yet hesitant,
+thin, trying to do too much, though there is music in it; but it is
+stolen music, and he cannot conjure with it as can the genius of Japan.
+Lived never yet a man who could surpass the thing he aped. There lies
+the self-dug grave of every academy. Set the _Salome_ against the
+genius of Japan, and how small a thing it is! Something is lacking. It
+is not great music, it is full of reminiscences. It fails to capture
+the senses. It is “very clever for a young man.” In _Salome_ he got
+all that he could from the Japanese genius, an alien tongue; and in
+_The Stomach Dance_, the finest as it is the only really grossly
+indecent drawing of the sequence, he thrust the mimicry of the Japanese
+line as far as he could take it. By the time he had completed the
+_Salome_ he was done with the Japanese mimicry. At the Yuletide of
+1893 and thereafter, he turned his back upon it. He had discovered
+that line alone has most serious limitations; it baulked him, its keen
+worshipper, as he increased in power. And as a matter of fact, it is
+in the coruscating originality of his invention, in the fertility of
+arrangement, and in the wide range of his flippant fantasy that the
+_Salome_ designs reveal the increase of his powers as they reveal
+the widening range of his flight. He has near done with mimicry. He
+was weary of it, as he was weary of the limitations of the Japanese
+conventions, before he had completed the swiftly drawn designs with
+feverish eager address in those few weeks of the late autumn; and
+by the time he came to write Finis to the work with the designs for
+the Title Page and List of Contents, he was done with emptiness--the
+groundless earth, the floating figures in the air, the vague intersweep
+of figures and draperies, the reckless lack of perspective--all are
+gone. Thereafter he plants his figures on firm earth where foothold is
+secure, goes back a little way to his triumphs in the _Morte d’Arthur_,
+and trained by his two conflicting guidances, the Japanesque and the
+mediævalesque, he creates a line that is Beardsley’s own voice and
+hand--neither the hand of Esau nor the voice of Jacob. When Beardsley
+laid down the book of _Salome_ he had completed it with a final
+decoration which opened the gates to self-expression. When Beardsley
+closed the book of _Salome_ he had found himself. His last great
+splendid mimicry was done. And as though to show his delight in it he
+sat down and drew the exquisite _Burial of Salome_ in a powder-box in
+the very spirit of the eighteenth century whose child he was.
+
+_Salome_ finished, however, was not _Salome_ published. Elkin Mathews
+and John Lane realised that the drawings could not appear without
+certain mitigations, though, as a matter of fact, there were but two
+gross indecencies in them. Both men were anxious to achieve public
+recognition for the gifted young fellow, and they knew him to be
+“difficult.” However, Gleeson White was consulted and he consulted me
+amongst others as an outside and independent opinion. Being greatly
+pleased by the suggestions that I made, Gleeson White put them forward,
+and told me they were warmly welcomed by the two troubled men who
+would have had to bear the brunt of the obloquy for any mistake or
+indiscretion. It was agreed to the satisfaction of all concerned that
+Beardsley should not touch the originals but should make alterations
+on the few offending proofs and that new blocks should then be made
+from the altered proofs, which, when all is said, required but little
+done to them, thereby preserving the original drawings intact. Thus
+the publication would offend no one’s sense of decorum--however much
+they might exasperate the taste. Odd to say, one or two ridiculously
+puritanical alterations were made whilst more offensive things were
+passed by! By consequence, the _Title Page_, and _Enter Herodias_
+were slightly altered simply to avoid offence to public taste; but I
+was astonished to find, on publication, that of the only two drawings
+that were deliberately and grossly obscene, _The Stomach Dance_
+appeared without change--was accepted without demur by the public
+and in silence by the censorious--indeed the lasciviousness of the
+musician seems to have offended nobody’s eye; while the _Toilette of
+Salome_, a fine design, which only required a very slight correction,
+had been completely withdrawn with the quite innocent but very
+second-rate design of _John and Salome_, and in place of the two
+had been inserted the wretched _Black Cape_ and Georgian _Toilette_
+which were not only utterly out of place in the book but tore the
+fabric of the whole design to pieces, and displayed in Beardsley a
+strain of inartistic mentality and vulgarity whereby he was prepared
+to sacrifice a remarkable achievement to a fit of stupid spleen and
+cheap conceit--for it was at once clear that he resented any attempt
+to prevent his offending the public sense of decency even though his
+supporters might suffer thereby. Now, whether the public were canting
+or not, whether they were correct or not, Beardsley would not have been
+the chief sufferer by his committing flagrant indecencies in the public
+thoroughfare, and some of the drawings were deliberately indecent. The
+public were canting in many ways; but they were also long-suffering,
+and Beardsley’s literary advisers were solely concerned with the young
+fellow’s interests. Besides vice has its cant as well as virtue. In any
+case, the mediocre _Black Cape_ and the better Georgian _Toilette_,
+quite apart from their intrinsic merit in themselves as drawings, were
+an act of that utter bourgeois philistinism which the young fellow so
+greatly affected to despise, committed by himself alone. He who will
+thus fling stones at his own dignity has scant ground on which to
+complain of stone-throwing by the crowd.
+
+[Illustration: THE STOMACH DANCE
+
+_from “Salome”_]
+
+The interpolated _Black Cape_ and the _Second Toilette_ we may here
+dismiss as having nothing to do with the case; and what is more, they
+are wholly outside the _Salome_ atmosphere. Of the pure _Salome_
+designs, incomparably the finest are _The Stomach Dance_ and the
+_Peacock Skirt_. Yet, so faulty was Beardsley’s own taste at times,
+that he considered the best drawings to be _The Man in the Moon_, the
+_Peacock Skirt_, and _The Dancer’s Reward_--it should be noted by
+the way that Beardsley showed by his _Book of Fifty Drawings_ that
+his title was _The Man in the Moon_ not as the publishers have it,
+_The Woman in the Moon_. But it is in _The Climax_, one of the less
+noteworthy designs, that we discover Beardsley’s forward stride--for
+though the lower half is so wretchedly done that it scarce seems to
+be by the same hand as the upper half, the purification of the line as
+compared with the fussy, fidgety futilities and meaninglessness of his
+flourishes and “hairy line” in the same subject, and practically of the
+same design, drawn but a year before and shown in _The Studio_ first
+number, make us realise not only how rapidly he is advancing towards
+ease and clearness of handling, but it also makes us sympathise with
+the young fellow’s bitter distaste to carrying on a sequence of designs
+in a craftsmanship which he has utterly outgrown.
+
+We now come to the act for which Beardsley has been very severely
+censured. But it is rather a question whether the boot should not be
+on the other foot. It is not quite so simple a matter as it looks to
+the lay mind for an artist to fulfil a long contract which at the time
+of his making it he enthusiastically cherishes and fully intends to
+carry out. A work of art is not a manufactured article that can be
+produced indefinitely to a pattern. It is natural that a business-man
+should blame Beardsley for shrinking from completing a large sequence
+of designs, covering a long artistic development, to illustrate a book.
+Yet it is only just to recognise that it fretted the young fellow
+that he could not do it, and that it requires a frantic and maddening
+effort of will in any artist to keep going back and employing an
+utterance that he has left behind him and rejected, having advanced to
+such a handling as _The Neophyte_. It is like asking a man to put the
+enthusiasm and intensity of a struggle for victory into an endeavour
+after he has won the victory. However let us consider the exact
+position. First of all, were the very low prices paid to Beardsley a
+living wage?
+
+Beardsley may have been more torn between his honour as a good citizen
+and his honour as a great artist than he was likely to have been given
+the credit for having been; but he had to choose, willy-nilly, between
+his commercial honour and the fulfilling of his genius. A choice was
+compelled upon him, owing to the hardship that his poverty thrust
+upon him, in having accepted long contracts--or rather contracts that
+took time to fulfil. Before blaming Beardsley for not fulfilling his
+commercial obligations, it is only just to ask whether he could have
+fulfilled them even had he desired so to do. Was it possible for him,
+passing swiftly into a rapid sequence of artistic developments, to step
+back into a craftsmanship which he had outgrown as a game is restarted
+at the whistle of a referee? Once the voice of the youth breaks, can
+the deep accents of the man recover the treble of the boy? If not, then
+could the work of his new craftsmanship have been put alongside of
+the old without mutual antagonisms or hopeless incongruity? Could the
+_Salome_ drawings for instance have appeared in the _Morte d’Arthur_?
+But one thing is certain: Beardsley’s art and genius and his high
+achievement would have suffered--and Death was beckoning to him not
+to tarry. Either the commercial advantage of his publishers or the
+artistic achievement of his genius had to go. Which ought to go? Put it
+in another way: which is the greater good to the world, the achievement
+of genius or the fulfilment of the commercial contract of genius to the
+letter for the profit of the trade of one man? If instead of creating
+a great art, Beardsley had what is called “got religion” and gone
+forth to benefit mankind instead of completing his worldly duties by
+doing a given number of drawings for a book, would he deserve censure?
+Of the 544 or so decorations for the _Morte d’Arthur_, several are
+repeated--some more than once. Let us take 400 as a rough estimate,
+just for argument. Calculating roughly that he made 400 drawings for
+the _Morte d’Arthur_, did he get a living wage for them? Did he get
+a bare subsistence, say of a guinea a drawing? Supposing he got £100
+for them, then he would be working at something like five shillings
+a drawing! Two hundred pounds would be ten shillings a drawing; £300
+would be fifteen shillings. His bank-book alone can reveal to us what
+he earned. But supposing he did not get a living wage! The law will not
+permit an usurer to charge even a scapegrace waster more than a certain
+usury. If so, then it is not lawful or moral to contract with an artist
+to work for a beggar’s wage. We cannot judge Beardsley until we know
+the whole truth. The quality of mercy is not strained. His “pound of
+flesh” may be an abomination to demand. It is not enough to hold up
+self-righteous hands in protestation, Shylock-wise, that he refused to
+pay his pound of flesh....
+
+Even before Beardsley was done with _Salome_, he had exhausted the
+Japanesque formula of line. The play completed, the feverish brain has
+to evolve a _Title-page_, a _List of Contents_, and a _Finis_; and
+we have seen him playing in a new key. Closing the book of _Salome_,
+weary of the Japanesque, having got from it all that it would yield
+his restless spirit, he turns away, and picking up the rich blacks of
+his _Morte d’Arthur_ designs again, he was about to burst into a new
+song as hinted at by the last three designs for _Salome_. An artist is
+finding himself. Beardsley is on the threshold of a new utterance.
+
+[Illustration: TITLE PAGE OF “SALOME”]
+
+About the end of October or early in the November of 1893, Beardsley
+wrote to his old school that he had just signed a contract for a new
+book, to consist of his own drawings only, “without any letterpress,”
+which was probably a slight misunderstanding of what Beardsley said:
+that he was to make drawings with no relation to the letterpress in a
+new venture about to appear. For _The Yellow Book_ is the only contract
+that emerges out of this time.
+
+It is known that Henry Harland and Aubrey Beardsley were about this
+time, planning a magazine wherein to publish their wares; and that they
+took their scheme to John Lane.
+
+Whilst at work on the _Salome_, Beardsley began the long series of
+decorative covers, with the fanciful “keys,” on the reverse back,
+forming the initials of the author of each volume, which Elkin Mathews
+and John Lane began to issue from The Bodley Head in Vigo Street as
+_The Keynote Series_ of novels, published on the heels of the wide
+success of _Keynotes_ by George Egerton in the midst of the feminist
+stir and the first notoriety of the “sex novel” of this time.
+
+And it was in 1893 that Beardsley was elected to the New English Art
+Club.
+
+Beardsley was beginning to feel his feet. His circle amongst artists
+and art-lovers was rapidly increasing. Suddenly a legacy to the brother
+and sister from their Aunt in Brighton, with whom they had lived after
+their own family came to London, decided the young fellow and his
+sister to set up house for themselves and to flit from the parental
+roof. About the end of the year, or the New Year of 1894, they bought
+their little home--a house in Pimlico at 114 Cambridge Street.
+
+[Illustration: COVER DESIGN FOR “THE YELLOW BOOK” VOLUME III]
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+THE GREEK VASE PHASE
+
+New Year of 1894 to Mid-1895--Twenty-One to Twenty-Three
+
+“THE YELLOW BOOK”
+
+
+It was near the New Year of 1894 that Aubrey Beardsley and his sister
+Mabel Beardsley moved into the young fellow’s second Pimlico home
+in London, at 114 Cambridge Street, Warwick Square, which Vallance
+decorated for him with orange walls and black woodwork, with its much
+talked-of black and orange studio. How dull and stale it all sounds
+today!
+
+Here Beardsley made his bid for a place in the social life of London.
+Every Thursday afternoon he and his sister, and generally his mother,
+were “At Home” to visitors. Beardsley, dressed with scrupulous care
+to be in the severest good taste and fashion, delighted to play
+the host--and an excellent host he was. All his charming qualities
+were seen at their best. The lanky, rather awkward, angular young
+man, pallid of countenance, stooped and meagre of body, with his
+“tortoise-shell coloured hair” worn in a smooth fringe over his white
+forehead, was the life and soul of his little gatherings. He paid for
+it with “a bad night” always when the guests were departed.
+
+Beardsley greatly liked his walls decorated with the stripes running
+from ceiling to floor in the manner he so much affects for the designs
+of his interiors such as the famous drawing of the lady standing at
+her dressing-table known as _La Dame aux Camélias_. The couch in his
+studio bore sad evidence to the fact that he had to spend all too much
+of his all too short life lying upon it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Beardsley began the _Salome_ drawings at twenty-one he was, as
+we have seen, greatly interested in the erotic works of the Japanese
+masters; and this eroticism dominated his art quite as much as did the
+craftsmanship of the Japanese in line, whilst the lechery of his faces
+was distinctly suggested by the sombre, the macabre, and the grotesque
+features so much affected by the Japanese masters. Whilst at work
+upon the _Salome_ designs he was much at the British Museum and was
+intensely drawn to the Greek vase-paintings in which the British Museum
+is very rich. Now not only did the austere artistry of the Greeks in
+their line and mass fascinate Beardsley--not only was he struck by
+the rhythm and range of mood, tragic, comic, and satirical, uttered
+by the Greeks, but here again was that factor in the Greek genius
+which appealed to Beardsley’s intense eroticism. The more obscene of
+the Greek vase-painters are naturally turned away from the public eye
+towards the wall, indeed some of them ’tis said, have been “purified”
+by prudish philistinism painting out certain “naughtinesses”; but it
+was precisely the skill with which the great Greek painters uttered
+erotic moods by the rhythmic use of line and mass that most keenly
+intrigued Beardsley. The violences of horrible lecherous old satyrs
+upon frail nymphs, painted by such Greek masters as Brygos and Duris,
+appealed to the morbid and grotesque mind and mood of Beardsley as they
+had tickled the Greeks aforetime. He had scarce finished his _Salome_
+drawings under the Japanese erotic influence before the Greek satyr
+peeps in; Beardsley straightway flung away the Japanesque, left it
+behind him, and boldly entered into rivalry with the Greeks. It was to
+make him famous.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: LA DAME AUX CAMÉLIAS
+
+_from “The Yellow Book,” Volume III_]
+
+On the 15th of April 1894 appeared _The Yellow Book_. It made Beardsley
+notorious.
+
+In the February of 1894 Salome had been published cheek by jowl
+with the 3rd, the last, volume of _Bon Mots_; and _Morte d’Arthur_
+was in full career. It is a common fallacy amongst writers to say
+that _Salome_ made Beardsley famous. _Salome_ was an expensive
+book, published in a very limited edition. Except in a small but
+ever-increasing literary and artistic set, the _Morte d’Arthur_ and
+_Salome_ passed quite unrecognised and unknown. But _Salome_ did lead
+to an act which was to make Beardsley leap at a bound into the public
+eye.
+
+Elkin Mathews and John Lane were inspired with the idea of publishing
+a handsome little quarterly, bound as a book, which should gather
+together the quite remarkable group of young writers and artists that
+had arisen in London, akin to and in part largely created by the
+so-called Decadent group in Paris. This is not the place to describe
+or pursue the origins and rise of the French “Decadents.” The idea of
+_The Yellow Book_ developed from a scheme of Beardsley’s who was rich
+in schemes and dreams rarely realised or even begun, whereby he was to
+make a book of drawings without any letterpress whatsoever, of a sort
+of pictorial Comedy Ballet of Marionettes--to answer in the pictorial
+realm of Balzac’s Prose Comedy of life; but it does not seem to have
+fired a publisher. _The Yellow Book_ quarterly, however, was a very
+different affair, bringing together, as it did, the scattered art
+of the younger men. It inevitably drew into its orbit, as Beardsley
+dreaded it would, self-advertising mediocrities more than one. It
+was decided to make Harland with his French literary sympathies the
+literary editor, Beardsley to be the art editor. John Lane has borne
+witness to the fact that one morning Beardsley with Henry Harland and
+himself, “during half an hour’s chat over our cigarettes at the Hogarth
+Club, founded the much discussed _Yellow Book_.” This quarterly, to
+be called _The Yellow Book_ after the conventional name of a “yellow
+back” for a French novel, was to be a complete book in itself in each
+number--not only was it to be rid of the serial or sequence idea of a
+magazine, but the art and the literature were to have no dependence the
+one on the other.
+
+Beardsley, feverishly as he had addressed himself to the _Salome_, as
+we have seen, had no sooner made the drawings than he wearied of them
+and sought for new worlds to conquer. It was about the New Year of
+1894, the _Salome_ off his hands, that _The Yellow Book_ was planned in
+detail, and Beardsley flung himself into the scheme with renewed fiery
+ardour. The idea suited him better than any yet held out to him for the
+expression of his individual genius; and his hand’s craft was beginning
+to find personal expression. His mimicries and self-schooling were near
+at an end. He flung the Japanesques of the _Salome_ into the wastepaper
+basket of his career with as fine a sigh of relief as he had aforetime
+flung aside the _Morte d’Arthur_ Kelmscott mediævalism. And he now
+gave utterance to the life of the day as he saw it--through books--and
+he created a decorative craftsmanship wherewith to do it, compact of
+his intensely suggestive nervous and musical line in collusion with
+flat black masses, just as he saw that the Greeks had done--employing
+line and mass like treble and bass to each other’s fulfilment and
+enhancement. His apprenticeship to firm line and solid blacks in the
+_Morte d’Arthur_ now served him to splendid purpose. He was taking
+subjects that would tickle or exasperate the man-in-the-street, who was
+cold about the doings of the Court of Herod and indifferent to Japan
+and The Knights of the Round Table. Interested in the erotic side of
+social life, he naturally found his subjects in the half-world--he
+took the blatant side of “life” as it was lived under the flare of
+the electric lights of Piccadilly Circus, and the cafés thereabouts;
+its powdered and painted and patchouli “romance” amused him more than
+the solid and more healthy life of his day into which he had little
+insight, and for which he had rather a contempt as judged from his
+own set as being “middle-class” and unromantic. He scorned his own
+class. But he had the right as artist to utter any emotional experience
+whatsoever, the erotic as much as anything else--but we are coming to
+that.
+
+It was about this New Year of 1894 that the extraordinary German,
+Reichardt, who had made a huge success of his humorous and artistic
+weekly, _Pick-Me-Up_, in rivalry with Punch, planned the issue of a
+monthly magazine which had as its secret aim, if successful, that
+it should become a weekly illustrated paper to “smash the _Graphic_
+and _Illustrated London News_.” Struck by some article attacking the
+art critics written by me, he called me to the writing of the weekly
+review of Art Matters in this paper which was to be called _St.
+Paul’s_. Although at this time Beardsley was almost unknown to the
+general public, I suggested that the young artist should be given an
+opening for decorative work; and he was at once commissioned to make
+some drawings, to illustrate the Signs of the Zodiac--(remember, _St.
+Paul’s_ was to begin as a monthly!)--and to illustrate the subjects
+to which each page was to be devoted such as Music, Art, Books,
+Fashions, The Drama, and the rest of it. He drew the “_Man that holds
+the Water_ _Pot_” and the “_Music_,” but the paper did not appear
+in January--indeed not until March. Beardsley then became bored, and
+fobbed off the paper with a couple of drawings that were probably
+meant for Dent’s _Bon Mots_--however they may have been intended for
+_The Fashions_ and _The Drama_ pages of _St. Paul’s_. He made in all
+four which were to be used as headings and tail pieces. They did not
+greatly encourage Reichardt, who shrugged his shoulders and said that I
+“might have the lot.” They have never reached me! They have this value,
+however, that they reveal Beardsley’s craftsmanship at the New Year of
+1894--they show him ridding himself of the “hairy line,” with a marked
+increase of power over line--they end his _Salome_ Japanesque phase.
+
+It is somewhat curious that, whilst _The Man that holds the Water Pot_
+is always printed awry in the collections of Beardsley’s works, the
+fourth drawing he made for _St. Paul’s_ seems to have been missed by
+all iconographists, and I now probably possess the only known print of
+it!
+
+Before we leave _St. Paul’s_, it is interesting to note that at this
+time the line and decorative power of Beardsley’s work were rivalled by
+the beauty, quality, richness, and decorative rhythm of the ornamental
+headings which Edgar Wilson was designing for _St. Paul’s_ and other
+papers.
+
+[Illustration: MESSALINA]
+
+It was in the March of 1894 that Beardsley drew the _Poster for the
+Avenue Theatre_ which really brought him before a London public more
+than anything he had so far done--a success, be it confessed, more due
+to the wide interest aroused by the dramatic venture of the Avenue
+Theatre than to any inherent value in the Poster itself which could
+not be compared with the work of the Beggarstaff Brothers. Needless
+to say that it was at this same time that George Bernard Shaw was
+to float into the public ken with his play of _Arms and the Man_ at
+this same Avenue Theatre, hitherto so unlucky a play-house that from
+its situation on the Embankment under Charing Cross Bridge, it was
+cynically known to the wags as “The Home for Lost Seagulls.” I shall
+always associate Beardsley’s Avenue Theatre poster with Shaw’s rise
+to fame as it recalls Shaw’s first night when, being called before
+the curtain at the end of _Arms and the Man_, some man amongst the
+gods booing loud and long amidst the cheering, Shaw’s ready Irish wit
+brought down the house as, gazing upwards into the darkness, his lank
+loose figure waited patiently until complete silence had fallen on
+the place, when he said dryly in his rich brogue: “I agree with that
+gentleman in the gallery, but”--shrugging his shoulders--“what are we
+amongst so many?”
+
+Beardsley’s decorations for John Davidson’s _Plays_ appeared about the
+April of this year; but, needless to say, did not catch the interest of
+a wide public.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Suddenly his hour struck for Aubrey Beardsley.
+
+It was the publication of _The Yellow Book_ in the mid-April of 1894
+that at once thrust Beardsley into the public eye and beyond the narrow
+circle so far interested in him.
+
+London Society was intensely literary and artistic in its interests, or
+at any rate its pose, in the early ’nineties. Every lady’s drawing-room
+was sprinkled with the latest books--the well-to-do bought pictures and
+wrangled over art. The leaders of Society prided themselves on their
+literary and artistic salons. As a snowfall turns London white in a
+night, so _The Yellow Book_ littered the London drawing-rooms with
+gorgeous mustard as at the stroke of a magician’s wand. It “caught on.”
+And catching on, it carried Aubrey Beardsley on the crest of its wave
+of notoriety into a widespread and sudden vogue. After all, everything
+that was outstanding and remarkable about the book was Beardsley. _The
+Yellow Book_ was soon the talk of the town, and Beardsley “awoke to
+find himself famous.” Punch promptly caricatured his work; and soon he
+was himself caricatured by “Max” in the _Pall Mall Budget_; whilst the
+Oxford undergraduates were playing with Wierdsley Daubrey and the like.
+But it was left to Mostyn Piggott to write perhaps the finest burlesque
+on any poem in our tongue in the famous skit which ran somewhat thus:
+
+  ’Twas rollog; and the minim potes
+  Did mime and mimble in the cafe;
+  All footly were the Philerotes
+  And Daycadongs outstrafe....
+
+  Beware the Yellow Bock, my son!
+  The aims that rile, the art that racks,
+  Beware the Aub-Aub Bird, and shun
+  The stumious Beerbomax!
+
+  *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Then, as veep Vigo’s marge he trod,
+  The Yallerbock, with tongue of blue,
+  Came piffling through the Headley Bod,
+  And flippered as it flew....
+
+[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF HIMSELF
+
+_from “The Yellow Book” Volume III_
+
+  PAR LES DIEVX
+  JVMEAVX TOVS
+  LES MONSTRES
+  NE SONT PAS EN
+  AFRIQUE]
+
+As one turns over the pages of _The Yellow Book_ today, it is a
+little difficult to recall the sensation it made at its birth.
+Indeed, London’s passions and whims, grown stale, are fantastic
+weeds in the sear and yellow leaf. But it _was_ a sensation. And that
+sensation flung wide the doors of Society to Aubrey Beardsley. He
+enjoyed his fame with gusto. He revelled in it. And the ineffable and
+offensive conceit that it engendered in the lad was very excusable and
+understandable. He was lionised on every hand. He appeared everywhere
+and enjoyed every ray of the sun that shone upon him. And the good
+fortune that his fairy godmother granted to him in all his endeavours,
+was enhanced by an increase of health and strength that promised
+recovery from the hideous threat that had dogged his sleeping and
+waking. His musical childhood had taught him the value of publicity
+early--the whole of his youth had seen him pursuing it by every means
+and at every opportunity. When fame came to him he was proud of it and
+loved to bask in its radiance. At times he questioned it; and sometimes
+he even felt a little ashamed of it--and of his Jackals. But his vogue
+now took him to the “domino room” of the Café Royal as a Somebody--and
+he gloried in the hectic splendour of not having to be explained.
+
+It was now roses, roses all the way for Aubrey Beardsley; yet even at
+the publishing of the second volume of _The Yellow Book_ in July there
+was that which happened--had he had prophetic vision--that boded no
+good for the young fellow.
+
+The deed of partnership between Elkin Mathews and John Lane fell in,
+and Elkin Mathews withdrew from the firm, leaving John Lane in sole
+possession of The Bodley Head--and _The Yellow Book_.
+
+The parting of Elkin Mathews and John Lane seemed to bring to a head
+considerable feeling amongst the group of writers collected about The
+Bodley Head; this was to bear bitter fruit for Beardsley before a
+twelvemonth was out.
+
+It was on the designs of this second volume of _The Yellow Book_ of
+July 1894 that Beardsley signed his “Japanesque mark” for the last
+time. Indeed these signed designs were probably done before June; for,
+in the _Invitation Card for the Opening of the Prince’s Ladies Golf
+Club_ on Saturday June 16th 1894, the “Japanesque mark” has given place
+to “AUBREY BEARDSLEY.”
+
+Beardsley was to be seen everywhere. People wondered when he did his
+work. He flitted everywhere enjoying his every hour, as though he had
+no need to work--were above work. He liked to pose as one who did
+not need to work for a livelihood. As each number of the quarterly
+appeared, he won an increase of notoriety--or obloquy, which was much
+the same thing to Aubrey Beardsley; but as the winter came on, he was
+to have a dose of obloquy of a kind that he did not relish, indeed that
+scared him--and as a fact, it was most scandalously unfair gossip.
+Meanwhile the Christmas number of _Today_ produced his very fine
+night-piece _Les Passades_.
+
+[Illustration: NIGHT PIECE]
+
+Oscar Wilde was at the height of his vogue--as playwright and wit and
+man of letters. Beardsley’s artistic share in the _Salome_, with its
+erotic atmosphere and its strange spirit of evil, gave the public a
+false impression that Beardsley and Wilde were intimates. They never
+were. Curiously enough, the young fellow was no particular admirer
+of Wilde’s art. And Wilde’s conceited remark that he had “invented
+Beardsley” deeply offended the other. To cap it all, Beardsley
+delighted in the bohemian atmosphere and the rococo surrounding of what
+was known as the Domino Room at the Café Royal, and it so happened that
+Wilde had also elected to make the Café Royal his Court, where young
+talent was allowed to be brought into the presence and introduced. It
+came into the crass mind of one of Wilde’s satellites to go over
+to a table at which Beardsley was sitting, revelling in hero-worship,
+and to lead the young fellow into the presence, as Wilde had signified
+his condescension to that end--but the gross patronage of Wilde on
+the occasion wounded the young fellow’s conceit to the quick. It had
+flattered Beardsley to be seen with Wilde; but he never became an
+intimate--he never again sought to bask in the radiance.
+
+To add to Beardsley’s discomfort, there fell like bolt from the blue a
+novel called _The Green Carnation_ of which Wilde and his associates
+were the obvious originals. The book left little to the imagination.
+The Marquis of Queensberry, owing to his son Lord Alfred Douglas’s
+intimacy with Wilde, was only too eager to strike Wilde down. Even
+if Queensberry had been inclined to hang back he could not very
+well in common decency have allowed the imputations of the book to
+pass by him without taking action. But he welcomed the scandal. He
+sprang at opportunity--and struck hard. With the reckless courage
+so characteristic of him, Queensberry took serious risks, but he
+struck--and he knew that the whole sporting world, of which he was a
+leader, would be behind him, as he knew full well that the whole of the
+healthy-minded majority of the nation would be solid in support of his
+vigorous effort to cut the canker out of society which was threatening
+public life under Wilde’s cynical gospel that the world had arrived at
+a state of elegant decay.
+
+Queensberry publicly denounced Wilde and committed acts which brought
+Wilde into public disrepute. There was nothing left to Wilde but to
+bring a charge of criminal libel against him or become a social pariah.
+On the 2nd of March 1895 Queensberry was arrested and charged at
+Marlbourgh Street; on the 9th he was committed for trial; and on the
+3rd of April he was tried at the Old Bailey amidst an extraordinary
+public excitement. He was acquitted on the 5th of April amidst the wild
+enthusiasm of the people. Oscar Wilde was arrested the same evening.
+
+On the 6th of April, Wilde, with Taylor, was charged at Bow Street with
+a loathsome offence; public interest was at fever pitch during the
+fortnight that followed, when, on the 19th of April Wilde and Taylor
+were committed for trial, bail being refused. A week later, on the
+26th, the trial of Wilde and Taylor began at the Old Bailey. After a
+case full of sensations, on the 1st of May, the jury disagreed and the
+prisoners were remanded for a fresh trial, bail being again refused. A
+week later, on the 7th of May, Wilde was released on bail for £5,000;
+and it was decided to try the two men separately. Taylor was put on
+trial at the Old Bailey for the second time, alone, on May the 20th,
+and the next day was found “guilty,” sentence being postponed. The
+following day, the 22nd, the second trial of Wilde began at the Old
+Bailey, and on the 25th of May he also was found “guilty,” and with
+Taylor was sentenced to two years imprisonment with hard labour.
+
+The popular excitement over this trial of Wilde reached fever heat. The
+fall of Wilde shook society; and gossip charged many men of mark with
+like vices. Scandal wagged a reckless tongue. A very general scare set
+in, which had a healthy effect in many directions; but it also caused
+a vast timidity in places where blatant effrontery had a short while
+before been in truculent vogue....
+
+John Lane, now at The Bodley Head alone, had published volume III of
+_The Yellow Book_ in October 1894 and volume IV in the January of
+1895. Beardsley had made the drawings for the April number, volume
+V; the blocks were also made, and a copy or so of the number bound,
+when, at the beginning of March, Queensberry’s arrest shook society.
+The public misapprehension about Beardsley being a friend of Oscar
+Wilde’s probably caused some consternation amongst the writers of _The
+Yellow Book_; but whatever the cause, John Lane who was in America
+was suddenly faced with an ultimatum--it was said that one of his
+chief poets put the pistol to his head and threatened that without
+further ado either he or Beardsley must leave _The Yellow Book_ at
+once. Now this cable announced that William Watson was not alone but
+had the alliance of Alice Meynell, then at the height of her vogue,
+with others most prominent in this movement. Into the merits of the
+storm in the teacup we need not here go. What decided John Lane in
+his awkward plight to sacrifice Beardsley rather than the poet was
+a personal matter, solely for John Lane to decide as suited his own
+business interest best. He decided to jettison Beardsley. The decision
+could have had little to do with anything objectionable in Beardsley’s
+drawings, for a copy was bound with Beardsley’s designs complete, and
+anything more innocent of offence it would be difficult to imagine. It
+may therefore be safely assumed that the revolt on John Lane’s ship was
+solely due to the panic set up by the Wilde trial, resulting in a most
+unjust prejudice against Beardsley as being in some way sympathetic
+in moral with the abhorred thing. No man knows such gusts of moral
+cowardice as the moralist. However, in expelling Beardsley _The Yellow
+Book_ was doomed--it at once declined, and though it struggled on, it
+went to annihilation and foundered.
+
+This ultimatum by cable to John Lane in America was a piece of cant
+that Lane felt as bitterly as the victim Beardsley. It grieved John
+Lane to his dying day, and he blamed himself for lack of courage in
+deserting the young fellow; but he was hustled, and he feared that it
+might wreck the publishing house which he had built up at such infinite
+pains. Above all he knew that Beardsley would never forgive him. But
+Lane blamed himself quite needlessly, as in all this ugly incident, in
+that he had shown lack of personal dignity in allowing himself to be
+thrust aside from captaincy of his own ship whilst he had been made
+responsible for the act of his mutineers which he had whole-heartedly
+detested. Lane would not be comforted. He never ceased to blame himself.
+
+His expulsion from _The Yellow Book_ was very bitterly resented by
+Beardsley. It hurt his pride and it humiliated him at the height
+of his triumph. And he writhed at the injustice inflicted upon him
+by the time selected to strike at him, besmirching him as it did
+with an association of which he was wholly innocent. And it must
+be confessed that _The Yellow Book_ at once became a stale farce
+played by all concerned except the hero, from the leading lady to the
+scene-shifter--_Hamlet_ being attempted without the Prince of Denmark.
+
+The trial and conviction of Oscar Wilde shook the young fellow even
+more thoroughly. Quite apart from the fierce feeling of resentment
+at the injustice of his being publicly made to suffer as though an
+intimate of a man in disgrace for whom he had no particular liking,
+Beardsley realised that his own flippant and cheaply cynical attitude
+towards society might, like Wilde’s, have to be paid for at a hideous
+price. The whole ugly business filled him with disgust; and what at
+least was to the good, the example of Wilde’s crass conceit humbled in
+the dust, knocked much of the cheap conceit out of Beardsley, to his
+very great advantage, for it allowed freer play to that considerable
+personal charm that he possessed in no small degree.
+
+[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF MRS. PATRICK CAMPBELL
+
+_from “The Yellow Book,” Volume I_]
+
+His expulsion from _The Yellow Book_ placed Beardsley in a very awkward
+financial position. The income that he derived from his drawings for
+_The Yellow Book_ must have been but small at best; and it is a mystery
+how he lived. It has been said that he found generous patrons, and
+that of these not the least generous was one André Raffalovich, a man
+of wealth. But the sources of his means of livelihood must have been
+dangerously staunched by his expulsion from _The Yellow Book_.
+
+The strange part of Beardsley’s career is that the designs for
+volume V of _The Yellow Book_, printed for April, but suppressed at
+the last moment, ended his achievement in this phase and style and
+craftsmanship. When the blow fell, he was already embarking upon a
+new craftsmanship; indeed towards this development he markedly moves
+in the later _Yellow Book_ designs. Had Beardsley died in mid-1895,
+at twenty-three, he would have left behind him the achievement of an
+interesting artist; but not a single example of the genius that was
+about to astonish the world.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_The Yellow Book_ phase of Beardsley’s art is very distinct from what
+went before and what was to come after. There are two types: a fine
+firm line employed with flat black masses of which the famous _Lady
+Gold’s Escort_ and _The Wagnerites_ are the type, and of which The
+Nightpiece is the triumph--and a very thin delicate line, generally
+for portraiture, to define faintly the body to a more firmly drawn
+head--of which the _Mrs. Patrick Campbell_ is the type and _L’Education
+sentimentale_ a variant--whilst the three remarkable _Comedy-Ballets of
+Marionettes I, II, and III_, show white masses used against black.
+
+Beardsley employed his “Japanesque mark” for the last time in mid-1894
+in the July volume, No. 2, of _The Yellow Book_. The _Plays of John
+Davidson_, several _Madame Réjanes_, the fine _Les Passades_, the
+_Scarlet Pastorale_, and the _Tales of Mystery and Wonder_ by Edgar
+Allan Poe, are all of the early 1894 _Yellow Book_ phase.
+
+But in the third volume of _The Yellow Book_, the fanciful and
+delightful portrait of _The Artist in bed_, “_Par les dieux jumeaux
+tous les monstres ne sont pas en Afrique_,” and the famous _La Dame
+aux Camélias_ standing before her dressing table, advance his handling
+in freedom and rhythm; as does the exquisite _The Mysterious Rose
+Garden_, which Beardsley described as “the first of a series of
+Biblical illustrations, and represents nothing more nor less than the
+_Annunciation_”--indeed he could not understand the objections of the
+prudish to it and resented its being misunderstood! The _Messalina with
+her Companion_ is of this later _Yellow Book_ phase; and the _Atalanta
+without the hound_ of the suppressed Fifth Volume is a fine example of
+it.
+
+The beautifully wrought _Pierrot Invitation Card_ for John Lane; the
+remarkable wash drawings _A Nocturne of Chopin_ from the suppressed
+Volume Five, and the _Chopin, Ballade III Op. 47_ of _The Studio_,
+all drawn on the eve of his expulsion from _The Yellow Book_, show
+Beardsley advancing with giant strides when the blow fell; and in the
+double-page _Juvenal_ of the monkey-porters carrying the Sedan-chair,
+he foreshadows his new design. But the surest test of the change,
+as well as the date of that change, is revealed by an incident that
+followed Beardsley’s expulsion from _The Yellow Book_; for, being
+commissioned to design a frontispiece by Elkin Mathews for _An Evil
+Motherhood_, Beardsley promptly sent the rejected _Black Cape_, of
+the suppressed Fifth Volume, direct to the printers; and it was only
+under the dogged refusal of Elkin Mathews to produce it that
+Beardsley made the now famous design of the _Evil Motherhood_ in which
+he entirely breaks from _The Yellow Book_ convention and craftsmanship,
+and launches into the craftsmanship of his Great Period.
+
+[Illustration: THE MYSTERIOUS ROSE GARDEN
+
+_from “The Yellow Book” Volume IV_]
+
+It was about the time of Beardsley’s expulsion from _The Yellow Book_
+that trouble arose in America over the piracy of one of Beardsley’s
+_Posters_ for Fisher Unwin, the publisher. Beardsley had made a
+mediocre poster for _The Pseudonym Library_, a woman in a street
+opposite a book shop; but followed it with the finest _Poster_ he ever
+designed--a lady reading, seated in a “groaning-chair,” a scheme in
+black and purple, for _Christmas Books_--all three of _The Yellow Book_
+phase.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There happened at this time soon after his expulsion from _The Yellow
+Book_, in mid-1895, a rather significant incident in young Beardsley’s
+life--an incident that dragged me into its comedy, and was to have a
+curious and dramatic sequel before three years were passed by.
+
+I had only as yet met Beardsley once. But it so happened by chance--and
+it was a regret to me that it so chanced--it fell to my lot to have to
+criticise an attack on modern British art in the early summer, and in
+the doing to wound Beardsley without realising it. He had asked for
+it, ’tis true--had clamoured for it--and yet resented others saying
+what he was arrogant in doing.... One of those stupid, narrow-vision’d
+campaigns against modern art that break out with self-sufficient
+philistinism, fortified by self-righteousness, amongst academic and
+conventional writers, like measles in a girls’ school, was in full
+career; and a fatuous and utterly unjust attack, led by Harry Quilter,
+if I remember rightly, leaping at the Oscar Wilde scandal for its happy
+opportunity, poured out its ridiculous moralities and charges against
+modern British art and literature over the pages of one of the great
+magazines, as though Wilde and Beardsley were England. It will be noted
+that with crafty skill the name of Beardsley was coupled with that of
+Wilde--I see the trick of “morality” now; I did not see it at the time.
+I answered the diatribe in an article entitled _The Decay of English
+Art_, in the June of 1895, in which it was pointed out that it was
+ridiculous, as it was vicious, to take Oscar Wilde in literature and
+Aubrey Beardsley in art as the supreme examples and typical examples
+of the British genius when Swinburne and young Rudyard Kipling and
+Shaw, to mention a few authors alone, Sidney Sime and the Beggarstaff
+Brothers and young Frank Brangwyn, to mention but two or three artists
+at random, with Phil May, were in the full tide of their achievement.
+Indeed, the point dwelt upon was that neither Wilde nor Beardsley, so
+far from being the supreme national genius, was particularly “national”
+in his art. Young Beardsley, remarkable as was his promise, had not
+as yet burst into full song, and in so far as he had given forth his
+art up to that time, he was born out of the Aesthetes (Burne-Jones and
+Morris) who, like the Pre-Raphaelites who bred them (Rossetti), were
+not national at all but had aped a foreign tongue, speaking broken
+English with an Italian accent, and had tried to see life through
+borrowed spectacles in frank and vaunted mimicry of mediæval vision.
+In going over Wilde’s and Beardsley’s claims to represent the British
+genius, I spoke of the art of both men as “having no manhood” and being
+“effeminate,” “sexless and unclean”--which was not at all typical
+of the modern achievement as a whole, but only of a coterie, if a very
+brilliantly led coterie, of mere precious poetasters.
+
+[Illustration: DESIGN FOR AN INVITATION CARD]
+
+Beardsley, I afterwards heard, egged on to it by the jackals about him,
+cudgelled his brains to try and write a withering Whistlerian reply;
+and after some days of cudgelling was vastly pleased with a laboriously
+hatched inspiration. It was a cherished and carefully nurtured ambition
+of the young fellow to rival Whistler in withering brevities to the
+Press. He wrote a letter to the editor of _St. Paul’s_; and the editor,
+Reichardt, promptly sent it on to me, asking if I had any objection to
+its being printed. The letter began clumsily and ungrammatically, but
+contained at the end a couple of quite smartly witty lines. It ran thus:
+
+  114 Cambridge Street
+  S. W.
+  June 28th
+
+ SIR, No one more than myself welcomes frank, nay, hostile criticism,
+ or enjoys more thoroughly a personal remark. But your art critic
+ surely goes a little too far in last week’s issue of St. Paul’s, & I
+ may be forgiven if I take up the pen of resentment. He says that I am
+ “sexless and unclean.”
+
+ As to my uncleanliness I do the best for it in my morning bath, & if
+ he has really any doubts as to my sex, he may come and see me take it.
+
+  Yours &c
+  Aubrey Beardsley
+
+This letter was read and shown to Beardsley’s circle amidst ecstatic
+delight and shrill laughter, and at last despatched.
+
+I wrote to Reichardt that of course Beardsley had every right to
+answer my criticisms, but that I should expect my reply to be
+published--that I quite understood Beardsley’s business astuteness in
+seeking self-advertisement--but I was the last man in the world to
+allow any man to make a fool of me in print even to add stature to
+Beardsley’s inches. But I suggested that as Beardsley seemed rather raw
+at literary expression, and as I hated to take advantage of a clown
+before he had lost his milk teeth, I would give him back his sword
+and first let him polish the rust off it; advised him, if he desired
+to pose as a literary wit, that he obliterate mistakes in grammar by
+cutting out the whole of the clumsy beginning, and simply begin with
+“Your critic says I am sexless and unclean,” and then straight to his
+naughty but witty last sentence. I begged therewith to forward my reply
+at the same time, as follows:
+
+A Public Apology to Mr. Aubrey Beardsley.
+
+ SIR,
+
+ When a cockrel sits overlong upon the egg of the spontaneous repartee,
+ his labour runs risk of betraying the strain to which he has put his
+ untried skill in giving birth to gossamer or bringing forth the airy
+ bladder of the scathing retort. To ape Whistler does not disprove
+ descent from the monkeys. But since Mr. Beardsley displays anxiety to
+ establish his sex, pray assure him that I eagerly accept his personal
+ confession. Nor am I overwhelmed with his rollicking devilry in taking
+ his morning bath--a pretty habit that will soon lose its startling
+ thrill of novelty if he persist in it.
+
+  Yours truly
+  Hal Dane.
+
+ July 3rd 1895
+
+The young fellow, on receipt of all this, awoke with a start to the
+fact that the sword is a dangerous weapon wherewith to carve a way to
+advertisement--the other fellow may whip from the scabbard as deadly a
+weapon for wounds.
+
+Beardsley seems to have rushed off to Reichardt--before giving
+out my answer to the jackals who had shrieked over Beardsley’s
+“masterpiece”--on receipt of my letter and, fearful lest he might be
+too late, the young fellow anxiously pleaded that he might be allowed
+to withdraw his letter. Reichardt replied that it must depend on
+me. I then wrote to Reichardt that of course I had suspected that
+Beardsley’s childish assurance that “no one more than himself enjoys
+more thoroughly a personal remark” was a smile on the wry side of his
+mouth; but that I ought to confess that it had not been any intention
+of mine to lash _at him_ but at Harry Quilter--at the same time perhaps
+he would not take it amiss from me, since I was no prude, that I
+thought it a pity that Beardsley should fritter his exquisite gifts
+to the applause of questionable jackals and the hee-haw of parasites,
+when he should be giving all his powers to a high achievement such as
+it would be a source of artistic pride for him to look back upon in the
+years to come. It is only fair to add that from that moment, Beardsley
+trusted me, and that his works as they were about to be published
+were sent to me in advance for criticism. What is more, in writing to
+Reichardt about Beardsley, I had strongly urged the young fellow to rid
+his signature of the wretched “rustic lettering” he affected, and to
+employ plain block letters as being in keeping with the beauty of his
+line and design; and to show how free he was from resenting sincere
+advice, from this time, greatly to the enhancement of his design,
+Beardsley used plain block lettering for his signature. Reichardt told
+me that tears came into the young fellow’s eyes when he read out to him
+a passage in my letter in which I had told him that, at a gathering at
+Leighton’s house, Phil May had asked the President of the Royal Academy
+whether he thought that Hal Dane had not put it rather extravagantly
+when he wrote that Beardsley was one of the supreme masters of line who
+had ever lived; to which Leighton had solemnly replied, before a group
+that was anything but friendly to Beardsley’s work, that he thoroughly
+agreed. It was a particular gratification to me that this little more
+than a lad was informed of Leighton’s appreciation whilst Leighton
+lived; for the President, a very great master of line himself, died
+about the following New Year. Phil May with precisely the same aim of
+craftsmanship in economy of line and the use of the line to utter the
+containing form in its simplest perfection, whilst he greatly admired
+the decorative employment of line and mass by Beardsley, considered
+Beardsley quite incapable of expressing his own age. Phil May was as
+masterly a draughtsman as Beardsley was an indifferent draughtsman; but
+both men could make line “sing.”
+
+In a brief three years, young Aubrey Beardsley was to lie a-dying:
+and as he so lay he wrote a letter to his publisher which is its own
+significant pathetic confession to this appeal that I made to him
+before it should be too late, little as one then realised how near the
+day of bitter regret was at hand.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Beardsley during his early _Yellow Book_ phase, about the July of 1894
+or a month or so afterwards, made his first essay in painting with
+oils. He had, in June or earlier, drawn the three designs for _The
+Comedy Ballet of Marionettes_ which appeared in the July _Yellow Book_;
+he now bought canvas and paints and painted, with slight changes, _The
+Comedy Ballet No. 1_, in William Nicholson’s manner. He evidently
+tired of the problems of the medium, or he was tired of the picture;
+and, turning the canvas about, he painted a _Lady with a Mouse_ on the
+unprimed back, between the stretchers, in the Walter Sickert style.
+“I have no great care for colour,” he said--“I only use flat tints,
+and work as if I were colouring a map, the effect aimed at being that
+produced on a Japanese print.” “I prefer to draw everything in little.”
+
+[Illustration: THE SCARLET PASTORALE]
+
+It is as likely as not that his attempt to paint _The Comedy Ballet I_
+in oils may have had something to do with its use as an advertisement
+for Geraudel’s Pastilles--as well as I can remember--which first
+appeared in _Le Courier Français_ on February 17th, 1895. It was a
+wonderful decade for the poster, and this French firm offered handsome
+prizes and prices for a good artistic one; though, as a matter of fact,
+Beardsley’s posters were quite outclassed by those of far greater men
+in that realm--Cheret, the Beggarstaff Brothers, Steinlen, Lautrec,
+and others. Beardsley’s genius, as he himself knew full well, was
+essentially “in the small.”
+
+For some unfortunate reason, but probably with good-natured
+intention of preventing Beardsley from suffering discredit at his
+dismissal from _The Yellow Book_, John Lane whilst in America during
+the summer started a well-meaning but quite fatuous theory, much
+resented by Beardsley, that the young fellow, so far from being the
+flower of decadence, was “a pitiless satirist who will crush it
+out of existence.... He is the modern Hogarth; look at his _Lady
+Gold’s Escort_ and his _Wagnerites_.... The decadent fad can’t long
+stand such satire as that. It has got to go down before it.” Scant
+wonder that the _Daily Chronicle_ asked dryly: “Now, why was Mr.
+Lane chaffing that innocent interviewer?” This apology for his art
+bitterly offended Beardsley, who knew it to be utterly untrue, but
+who still more resented this desire to show him as being really
+“quite respectable.” As a matter of fact, Beardsley had nothing of
+the satirist in him; had he wanted to satirise anything he would have
+satirised the respectabilities of the middle-class which he detested,
+not the musicians and the rich whom he adored and would have excused
+of any sin. Look through the achievement of Beardsley and try to fling
+together a dozen designs that could be made to pass for satire of the
+vices of his age! It became a sort of cant amongst certain writers to
+try and whitewash Beardsley by acclaiming him a satirist--he was none.
+A dying satirist does not try to recall his “obscene drawings.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At a loose end, on his expulsion from _The Yellow Book_, Beardsley
+drifted somewhat. He now turned his attention to a literary career, and
+began to write an erotic novel which he meditated calling _Venus and
+Tannhäuser_--it was to emerge later in a much mutilated state as _Under
+the Hill_--a sly jest for Under the Venusburg or Mons Veneris. He
+completely put behind him the Greek vase-painting phase of his drawings
+for _The Yellow Book_, and developed a new craftsmanship which was to
+create his great style and supreme achievement in art.
+
+The smallness of the page of _The Yellow Book_ had galled him by
+compelling upon him a very trying reduction of his designs to the size
+of the plate on the printed page; the reduction had always fretted him;
+it was become an irk. It compelled him largely to keep to the line and
+flat black masses of his Greek Vase phase longer than his interest was
+kept alive by that craftsmanship. His developments were uncannily rapid
+as though he knew he had but a short way to go.
+
+[Illustration: ATALANTA]
+
+_Baron Verdigris_ was the transition from the _Morte d’Arthur_ phase
+to the _Yellow Book_ or Greek Vase phase; the Mrs. Whistler as _The Fat
+Woman_ was the transition from his Greek vase stage; _Black Coffee_ the
+end of the Greek Vase stage. Rid of the cramping limitations of _The
+Yellow Book_ page and its consequent disheartening reduction, Beardsley
+was now to develop a freer use of his line and reveal a greater love of
+detail employed with a realistic decorative beauty all his own.
+
+He was still living in his house in Pimlico at 114 Cambridge Street,
+with his sister, when expelled from _The Yellow Book_. It was about
+this time that he met the poet John Gray who had been in the decadent
+movement and became a Roman Catholic priest--the friendship soon became
+more close and ripened into a warm brotherly affection. It was to have
+a most important effect on Beardsley’s life. Gray published Beardsley’s
+letters, which begin with their early acquaintance, and were soon
+very frequent and regular; these letters give us a clear intimate
+insight into Beardsley’s spiritual life and development from this time.
+Beardsley begins by calling him affectionately “My dear Mentor,” from
+which and from the letters we soon realise that Gray was from the first
+bent on turning the young fellow’s thoughts and tastes and artistic
+temperament towards entering the Roman Catholic Church. Indeed, soon
+we find Gray priming the young fellow with arguments to refute his
+“Anglican” friends.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The bout of renewed health that had come to cheer Beardsley with _The
+Yellow Book_, lasted only to the fall of the yellow leaf. Ill health
+began again to dog his footsteps; and it was an astonishing tribute to
+his innate vitality that he could keep so smiling a face upon it.
+
+Whether the little house in Pimlico were sold over his head, or
+whether from disheartenment of ill-health, or his expulsion from _The
+Yellow Book_ and all that it implied, in the July of 1895 the house at
+114 Cambridge Street was sold, and Beardsley removed to 10 and 11 St.
+James’s Place, S. W. It was all rather suddenly decided upon.
+
+He was by this time not only drifting back to bad health; but was so
+ill that those who saw him took him for a dying man.
+
+And _The Yellow Book_ went on without him, to die a long lingering
+ignoble death.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Drifting, rudderless; the certainty of a living wage from The Bodley
+Head gone wholly from him; hounded again by the fell disease that shook
+his frail body, Beardsley’s wonderful creative force drove him to the
+making of a drawing which was shown to me in this early summer of
+1895--and I awoke to the fact that a creative genius of the first rank
+in his realm had found himself and was about to give forth an original
+art of astounding power. It was the proof of the _Venus between
+Terminal Gods_. A little while later was to be seen the exquisite
+_Mirror of Love_, wrought just before the _Venus between Terminal
+Gods_. A new era had dawned for Aubrey Beardsley amidst the black gloom
+of his bitter sufferings and as bitter humiliation.
+
+[Illustration: TITLE-PAGE FROM “THE SAVOY” _NOS. 1 AND 2_]
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+THE GREAT PERIOD
+
+Mid-1895 to Yuletide 1896--Twenty-Three to Twenty-Four
+
+“THE SAVOY” and THE AQUATINTESQUES
+
+1. “THE SAVOY”
+
+
+It was in a state of drift, of uncertainty as to the future and even
+the present, that Aubrey Beardsley, after a year of brilliant good
+fortune, thus suddenly found himself rudderless and at sea. That
+fickle and heartless arty public that fawned upon him and fought for
+his smile, that prided itself on “discovering” him and approving his
+art, these were the last folk in the world to trouble their heads or
+put hand in pocket in order that he might live and be free to achieve
+his art. The greater public was inimical and little likely to show
+sympathy, far less to help.
+
+But even as he drifted, uncertain whether to pursue his art or to
+venture into literature instead, there stepped out of the void a man
+who was to make Beardsley’s path straight and his wayfaring easy. For,
+at the very moment of his perplexities, on his twenty-third birthday,
+Aubrey Beardsley was on the eve of his supreme achievement.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the summer of 1895, Arthur Symons, the poet and essayist, sought
+out Beardsley in his London rooms on a mission from as strange a
+providence as could have entered into Beardsley’s destiny--a man who
+proposed to found a new magazine, with Arthur Symons as literary editor
+and Beardsley as art editor. The mere choice of editors revealed this
+fellow’s consummate flair. His name was Leonard Smithers; and it was to
+this dandified fantastic adventurer that Beardsley was wholly to owe
+the great opportunity of his life to achieve his supreme master-work.
+Had it not been for Smithers it is absolutely certain that Aubrey
+Beardsley would have died with the full song that was within him unsung.
+
+Arthur Symons has told us of his mission and of his finding Beardsley
+lying on a couch--“horribly white, I wondered if I had come too late.”
+Beardsley was supposed to be dying. But the idea of this rival to _The
+Yellow Book_ which had at once begun to feel the cold draught of the
+fickle public’s neglect on the departure of Beardsley, appealed hugely
+to the afflicted man, and he was soon eagerly planning the scheme
+for its construction with Arthur Symons. No more ideal partner for
+Beardsley in the new venture could have been found than Arthur Symons.
+A thoroughly loyal man, a man of fine fibre in letters, he had far more
+than the ordinary cultured literary man’s feeling for pictorial art.
+The two men had also a common bond in their contempt of Mrs. Grundy and
+in their keen interest in the erotic emotions--Arthur Symons had not
+hesitated to besmirch the sweet name of Juliet by writing of a “Juliet
+of a Night.”
+
+Beardsley there and then suggested the happy name of _The Savoy_ for
+the magazine; and he quickly won over Symons to the idea, so vital to
+Beardsley’s work, of making the page a quarto size in order to enable
+his work to be produced on a larger scale.
+
+[Illustration: FRONTISPIECE FOR “VENUS AND TANNHÄUSER”]
+
+The scheme brought back energy and enthusiasm to Beardsley, and he
+was soon feverishly at work to surpass all his former achievement.
+What was perhaps of far more value to Beardsley in the pursuit of
+his art, even than the new outlet to a large public, was the offer of
+his publisher, Smithers, to finance Beardsley in return for all work
+whatsoever from his hands becoming thenceforth the sole copyright of
+Smithers. This exclusive contract with Smithers we are about to see
+working to Beardsley’s great advantage and peace of mind. It made him a
+free man.
+
+The exclusive right to all Beardsley’s drawings from this time gives
+us a clue to the fact that between the sudden expulsion from _The
+Yellow Book_ in the April of 1895 to the beginning of his work for
+Smithers, he, in his state of drift, created amongst other things two
+drawings of rare distinction, masterpieces which at once thrust him
+into the foremost rank of creative artists of his age--these drawings,
+clearly of mid-1895, since they did not belong to John Lane on the one
+hand, nor to Smithers on the other, were the masterly _Venus between
+Terminal Gods_, designed for his novel of _Venus and Tannhäuser_,
+better known as _Under the Hill_, and the exquisite _Mirror of Love_,
+or as it was also called _Love Enshrined in a Heart in the shape of
+a Mirror_. In both drawings Beardsley breaks away from his past and
+utters a clear song, rid of all mimicry whatsoever. His hand’s skill
+is now absolutely the servant to his art’s desire. He plays with the
+different instruments of the pen line as though a skilled musician drew
+subtle harmonies from a violin. His mastery of arrangement, rhythm,
+orchestration, is all unhesitating, pure, and musical. These two
+masterpieces affect the sense of vision as music affects the sense of
+sound. Beardsley steps into his kingdom.
+
+The man who opened the gates to Beardsley’s supreme genius was a
+fantastical usher to immortality. Leonard Smithers was a mysterious
+figure about whom myths early began to take shape. He was reputed to
+be an “unfrocked” attorney from Leeds. Whether an attorney from the
+north, frocked or unfrocked, or if unfrocked, for what unfrocked,
+gossip whispered and pursed the lip--but gave no clue. He came to
+London to adventure into books with an unerring flair for literature
+and for art. We have but a tangle of gossip from which to write the
+life of such a man. The tale went as to how he came to London and
+set up as a second-hand bookseller in a little slip of a shop, its
+narrow shelves sparsely sprinkled with a few second-hand books of
+questionable morality--a glass door, with a drab muslin peep-blind at
+the end, led into a narrow den from the dingy recess of which his lean
+and pale and unhealthy young henchman came forth to barter with such
+rare customers as wandered into the shop; of how, one evening, there
+drifted into the shop a vague man with a complete set of Dickens in the
+original paper covers; and of how, Smithers, after due depreciation
+of it, bought it for a few sovereigns; and how--whilst the henchman
+held the absent-minded seller in converse--Smithers slipped out and
+resold it for several hundred pounds--and how, the book being bought
+and the vague-witted seller departed, the shutters were hastily put
+up for the night; and of how Smithers, locking the muslin-curtained
+door, emptied out the glittering sovereigns upon the table before his
+henchman’s astonished eyes, and of how he and the pallid youth bathed
+their hair in showers of gold.... Smithers soon therefore made his
+daring _coup_ with Burton’s unexpurgated _Arabian Nights_, which was to
+be the foundation of Smithers’s fortune. The gossip ran that, choosing
+Friday afternoon, so that a cheque written by him could not reach a
+London bank before the morning of Monday, Smithers ran down to the
+country to see Lady Burton; and after much persuasion, and making it
+clear to her that the huge industry and scholarship of the great work
+would otherwise be utterly wasted, as it was quite unsaleable to an
+ordinary publisher, but would have to be privately issued, he induced
+her to sell Burton’s scrip for a couple of thousand pounds. Skilfully
+delaying the writing of the cheque for a sum which his account at the
+bank could not possibly meet, Smithers waited until it was impossible
+for the local post to reach London before the banks closed on Saturday
+morning--returned to town with the scrip--and spent the rest of the
+evening and the whole of Saturday in a vain and ever-increasing
+frantic endeavour to sell the famous manuscript for some seven or
+eight thousand pounds or so. It was only by dogged endeavour on the
+Sunday that he at last ran down his forlorn hope and sold it for--it
+is gossiped--some five thousand pounds. On the Monday morning the
+bank-porter, on opening the doors of the bank, found sitting on the
+doorstep a dandified figure of a man in silk hat and frock coat, with
+a monocle in his anxious, whimsical eye.... So Smithers paid the money
+into his account to meet the cheque which he had drawn and dated for
+this Monday, before the manager was likely to have opened his morning
+correspondence. It had been touch and go.
+
+[Illustration: THE MIRROR OF LOVE]
+
+Smithers now ventured into the lucrative but dangerous field of fine
+editions of forbidden or questionable books of eroticism. Thus it came
+about that when John Lane sent Beardsley adrift into space, Smithers
+with astute judgment seized upon the vogue that Lane had cast from
+him, and straightway decided to launch a rival quarterly wherewith
+to usurp _The Yellow Book_. He knew that young Beardsley, bitterly
+humiliated, would leap at the opportunity. And with his remarkable
+flair for literature and art, Smithers brought Arthur Symons and
+Aubrey Beardsley into his venture. Leonard Smithers did more--or at any
+rate so I had it from himself later, though Smithers was not above an
+“exaggeration” to his own advantage--Beardsley’s bank-books alone can
+verify or refute it--he intended and meant to see to it that, Beardsley
+from that hour should be a free man, free from cares of bread, free
+from suppressing his genius to suit the marketplace, free to utter what
+song was in him. Whether Smithers were the unscrupulous rogue that
+he was painted by many or not, he determined that from thenceforth
+Beardsley should be assured of a sound income whether he, Smithers, had
+to beg, borrow, or steal, or jockey others, in order that Beardsley
+should have it. This dissipated-looking man, in whatsoever way he
+won his means, was at this time always well dressed and had every
+appearance of being well-to-do. He had his ups and downs; but he made a
+show of wealth and success. And he kept his wilful bond in his wilful
+way. Whosoever went a-begging for it, Smithers raised the money by fair
+means or foul that Beardsley might fulfil himself, for good or for ill.
+He knew no scruple that stood in Beardsley’s way. It is true that when
+Beardsley died, Smithers exploited him; but whilst he lived, Smithers
+was the most loyal and devoted friend he had.
+
+[Illustration: A CATALOGUE COVER]
+
+A word-portrait of this man, drawn in the pages of a weekly paper,
+_M. A. P._, a couple of years after Beardsley’s death, shows him as
+he appeared to the public of his day. Smithers had left the Royal
+Arcade and blossomed out into offices in King’s Street, Covent Garden;
+as town house a large mansion near the British Museum; and a “place
+in the country”; “A publisher of books, although he is generally a
+subject of veneration, is not often possessed of a picturesque and
+interesting personality. Mr. Leonard Smithers is a notable exception
+to the unromantic rule. Few people who know him have failed to come
+under the spell of his wit and charm. In King Street, Covent Garden,
+Mr. Smithers has his office, and receives his guests in a great room
+painted green, and full of quietness and comfortable chairs. Upon the
+walls are many wonderful originals of pictures by the late Aubrey
+Beardsley, who was one of Mr. Smithers’s greatest friends during his
+brief but brilliant career. Mr. Smithers is of about medium height and
+very strongly built. He is clean-shaven, wears a single eye-glass, and
+has singularly clear-cut aristocratic features. A man who would be
+noticed in a crowd, he owes much of his success to his curious power
+of attracting people and holding their attention. He lives in a great
+palace of a house in Bedford Square. It was once the Spanish Embassy
+and is full of beautiful and costly things.... At his country house at
+Walton-on-Naze....”
+
+You see, an extravagant fellow, living in the grand style, the world
+his footstool--no expense spared. But the source of income a prodigious
+mystery. Not above being sued in the law-courts nevertheless, for
+ridiculously small, even paltry, debts. A man of mystery. Such was
+Leonard Smithers; such the man who stepped into young Beardsley’s
+life on the eve of his twenty-third year, and lifted him out of the
+humiliation that had been put upon him. Well might Beardsley write: “a
+good friend as well as a publisher.”
+
+Smithers unlatched the gate of another garden to Beardsley; the which
+was to be a sad pity. Among this man’s activities was a dangerous one
+of issuing private editions of works not fit for the general public.
+There are certain works of enormous value which can only thus be
+published. But it was owing to the licence thus given to Beardsley to
+exercise to the full the obscene taint in him, that the young fellow
+was encouraged to give rein to his laboured literary indecency, his
+novel entitled in its bowdlerised form _Under the Hill_, and later to
+illustrations which are amongst the finest achievement of his rare
+craftsmanship, but hopelessly unfit for publication.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Disgusted with _The Yellow Book_, Beardsley put his immediate past
+and influences behind him for ever, and went straight back to his
+beloved master Watteau, the one master who inspired all his highest
+achievement. His meeting Conder in the autumn greatly accelerated
+this return to the master of both. And with the brighter prospect now
+opening out before him, vigour came back to him, and the autumn and the
+early winter saw him wonderfully free from the terror that had again
+begun to dog his steps.
+
+Having hurriedly sold the house at 114 Cambridge Street and removed
+to 10 and 11 St. James’s Place, S. W., in the July of 1895, Beardsley
+in the late summer and early autumn was at Dieppe. Eased now from
+money cares by his contract with Smithers, and with _The Savoy_ due to
+appear in December, he went back to his early inspiration from the 18th
+century, and at once his art burst into full song.
+
+Arthur Symons was at Dieppe in the autumn and there discovered
+Beardsley immersed in his work for _The Savoy_; but finds him now more
+concerned with literary aspirations than with drawing. He was hard
+at work upon his obscene novel _Venus and Tannhäuser_, the so-called
+_Under the Hill_, and was keenly interested in verse, carrying the
+inevitable portfolio about with him under his arm wherever he went and
+scribbling phrases as they came to him.
+
+[Illustration: ON DIEPPE BEACH (THE BATHERS)]
+
+[Illustration: THE ABBE]
+
+The black portfolio, carried under his arm, led to the waggery of a
+city wit that whilst Beardsley had turned his back upon the city
+he could not shake off the habits and atmosphere of the Insurance clerk
+for he always entered a room cautiously as if expecting to be kicked
+violently from behind and looked as if he had “called in on behalf of
+the Prudential.”
+
+It is the fashion amongst the gushing to say of Beardsley that “if his
+master genius had been turned seriously towards the world of letters,
+his success would have been as undoubted there as it was in the world
+of arts.” It is true that Beardsley by his rare essays into literature
+proved a sensitive ear for literary colour in words of an artificial
+type; but his every literary effort proved his barrenness in literary
+gifts. His literary efforts were just precisely what the undergraduate,
+let loose upon London town, mistakes for literature, as university
+magazines painfully prove. He had just precisely those gifts that slay
+art in literature and set up a dreary painted sepulchre in its stead.
+He could turn out an extraordinary mimicry of a dandified stylist of
+bygone days; and the very skill in this intensely laboured exercise
+proved his utter uncreativeness in literature. He had a really sound
+sense of lilt in verse that was strangely denied to him in prose. It is
+precisely the cheap sort of precious stuff that imposes on superficial
+minds--the sort of barren brilliance that is the bewildering product
+not only of the academies but that is affected also in cultured city
+and scholastic circles.
+
+_Under the Hill_ was published in mutilated form in the coming _Savoy_,
+and afterwards in book form; and as such it baffles the wits to
+understand how it could have found a publisher, and how Arthur Symons
+could have printed this futile mutilated thing--if indeed he had any
+say in it, which is unthinkable. It is fantastic drivel, without
+cohesion, without sense, devoid of art as of meaning--a sheer laboured
+stupidity, revealing nothing--a posset, a poultice of affectations. The
+real book, of which all this is the bowdlerised inanity, is another
+matter; but it was so obscene, it revealed the young fellow revelling
+in an orgy of eroticism so unbridled, that it was impossible to publish
+it except in the privately printed ventures of Smithers’s underground
+press. But the real book is at least a significance. It gives us the
+real Beardsley in a self-confession such as explains much that would
+be otherwise baffling in his art. It is a frank emotional endeavour
+to utter the sexual ecstacies of a mind that dwells in a constant
+erotic excitement. To that extent at least it is art. Cut that only
+value out of it--a real revelation of life--and it yields us nothing
+but a nasty futility. But even the real book reveals a struggle with
+an instrument of expression for which Beardsley’s gifts were quite
+as inadequate as they were inadequate in the employment of colour to
+express emotion--even though in halting fashion it does discover the
+real unbridled Beardsley, naked and unashamed. It is literature at any
+rate compared with the fatuous ghost of it that was published to the
+world at large, the difference between a live man and a man of straw.
+
+[Illustration: THE FRUIT BEARERS]
+
+[Illustration: A CHRISTMAS CARD]
+
+As a literary effort the “novel” is interesting rather in showing us
+Beardsley’s shortcomings than his promise. The occasionally happy
+images are artistic pictorially rather than in phrasing--better
+uttered pictorially than by words. Beardsley had the tuneless ear for
+literature that permits a man to write the hideous phrase “a historical
+essay.” In one so censorious as Beardsley in matters of letters and
+art it is strange to find him reeking with the ugly illiteracy of
+using words in prose that can only be employed in verse. There is a
+pedantic use of words which shows in Beardsley that innate vulgarity of
+mind and taste which seems to think that it is far more refined
+English to say that there is “an increased humidity in the atmosphere”
+than to say “it is raining.” We find in his prose “argent lakes,”
+“reticent waters,” “ombre gateways,” “taper-time,” “around its marge,”
+and suchlike elaborate affectations of phrasing, going cheek by jowl
+with the crude housemaidish vulgarisms of “the subtlest fish that ever
+were,” “anyhow it was a wonderful lake”--what Tree used wittily to
+call “re-faned” English and housemaid’s English jostling each other
+at a sort of literary remnant sale. Side by side with this pedantic
+phrasing, with the illiteracy of employing verse phrases in prose,
+and with the housemaid’s use of English, goes a crude vulgarity of
+cheap commonplaces such as: “The children cried out, I can tell you,”
+“Ah, the rorty little things!”, “The birds ... kept up ajargoning and
+refraining”; “commanded the most delicious view,” “it was a sweet
+little place”; “card tables with quite the daintiest and most elegant
+chairs”; “the sort of thing that fairly makes one melt”; “said the fat
+old thing,” “Tannhäuser’s scrumptious torso”; “a dear little coat,” “a
+sweet white muslin frock”; “quite the prettiest that ever was,” and
+the rest of it. It is only when Beardsley lets himself go on the wings
+of erotic fancies and the sexual emotions that seem to have been the
+constant if eternal torment of his being, that he approaches a literary
+achievement; and unfortunately it is precisely in these moods that
+publication is impossible.
+
+This inability to create literature in a mind so skilful to translate
+or mimic the literature of the dead is very remarkable; but when we
+read a collection of Beardsley’s letters it is soon clear that he had
+been denied artistic literary gifts; for, the mind shows commonplace,
+unintellectual, innocent of spontaneous wit of phrase or the colour
+of words. It is almost incredible that the same hand that achieved
+Beardsley’s master-work in pen line could have been the same that shows
+so dullard in his letters to his friend John Gray. In them he reveals
+no slightest interest in the humanities, in the great questions that
+vex the age--he is concerned solely with his health or some business of
+his trade, or railway fares or what not. His very religious conversion
+shows him commonplace and childish. Of any great spiritual upheaval, of
+any vast vision into the immensities, of any pity for his struggling
+fellows, not a sign!
+
+It is to the eternal credit of Arthur Symons as friend and critic that
+he did not encourage Beardsley in his literary aspirations, but turned
+him resolutely to the true utterance of his genius. It is in splendid
+contrast with a futile publication of Beardsley’s “Table Talk” that
+others published.
+
+In _Under the Hill_ Beardsley reveals his inability to see even art
+except through French spectacles. He cannot grasp the German soul,
+so he had to make Tannhäuser into an Abbé--it sounded more real to
+him. The book is a betrayal of the soul of the real Beardsley--a
+hard unlovely egoism even in his love-throes, without one noble or
+generous passion, incapable of a thought for his fellows, incapable
+of postulating a sacrifice, far less of making one, bent only on
+satisfying every lust in a dandified way that casts but a handsome
+garment over the basest and most filthy licence. It contains gloatings
+over acts so bestial that it staggers one to think of so refined a mind
+as Beardsley’s, judged by the exquisiteness of his line, not being
+nauseated by his own emotions. It is Beardsley’s testament--it explains
+his art, his life, his vision--and it proves the cant of all who try to
+excuse Beardsley as a satirist. A satirist does not gloat over evil,
+he lashes it. Beardsley revelled in it. Nay, he utterly despised as
+being vulgar and commonplace all such as did not revel in it.
+
+[Illustration: THE THREE MUSICIANS
+
+_from “The Savoy” No. 1._]
+
+[Illustration: TAILPIECE TO “THE THREE MUSICIANS”]
+
+The story of _Venus and Tannhäuser_, bowdlerised as _Under the
+Hill_--by which Beardsley slyly means what he calls the Venusberg, for
+even Beardsley feared to _write_ the Mons Veneris,--he seemed undecided
+as to which to call it--the story was without consequence, without
+cohesion, without unity; it was the laboured stringing together of
+little phrases, word pictures of moods, generally obscene moods and
+desires such as come to plague a certain type of consumptive whose life
+burns at fever heat in the troubled blood. We know from Arthur Symons
+that Beardsley was for ever jotting down passages, epithets, newly
+coined words, in pencil in odd moments during this month at Dieppe.
+He gives us a picture of Beardsley, restless, unable to work except
+in London, never in the least appealed to by nature. Beardsley never
+walked abroad; Symons never saw him look at the sea. When the night
+fell, Beardsley came out and haunted the casino, gazing at the life
+that passed. He loved to sit in the large deserted rooms when no one
+was there--to flit awhile into the room where the children danced--the
+sound of music always drew him to the concerts. He always carries the
+inevitable portfolio with him and is for ever jotting down notes.
+He writes in a little writing room for visitors. He agonises over a
+phrase--he pieces the over-polished sentences and phrases together like
+a puzzle, making them fit where best they can. He bends all his wits
+to trying to write verse. He hammers out the eight stanzas of _The
+Three Musicians_ with infinite travail on the grassy ramparts of the
+old castle, and by dogged toil he brings forth the dainty indecencies,
+as later he chiselled and polished and chiselled the _translation from
+Catullus_. The innate musical sense of the fellow gives the verse
+rhythm and colour. But Beardsley failed, and was bound to fail, in
+literature, whether in verse or prose, because he failed to understand
+the basic significance of art. He failed because he tried to make
+literature an intellectual act of mimicry instead of an emotional
+act--he failed because all academism is a negation of art, because
+he mistook craftsmanship as the end of art instead of the instrument
+for emotional revelation. As Symons puts it, “it was a thing done to
+order,” in other words it was not the child of the vital impulse of
+all art whatsoever, he could not or did not create a make-believe
+whereby he sought to transmit his emotions to his fellows, for he was
+more concerned with trying to believe in his make-believe itself. It
+was not the child of emotional utterance, like his drawings--it was
+a deliberately intellectual act done in a polished form. We feel the
+aping of Wilde, of Whistler, of the old aphorists, like Pope, of the
+eighteenth century Frenchman. He uses his native tongue as if it were
+obsolete, a dead language--he is more concerned with dead words than
+with live. He tries to create a world of the imagination; but he cannot
+make it alive even for himself--he cannot fulfil a character in it
+or raise a single entity into life out of a fantastic Wardour Street
+of fine clothes--there is no body, far less soul, in the clothes. He
+is not greatly concerned with bringing people to life; he is wholly
+concerned with being thought a clever fellow with words. He is in this
+akin to Oscar Wilde.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was whilst at Dieppe that the famous French painter Jacques
+Blanche made a fine portrait of Beardsley; and in this hospitable
+friend’s studio it was that Beardsley set up the canvas for the
+picture he was always going to paint but never did. And it was to
+Beardsley’s infinite delight that Symons took him to Puy to see
+the author of one of Beardsley’s chief literary loves, _La Dame aux
+Camélias_--Alexandre Dumas, fils.
+
+[Illustration: COVER DESIGN FROM “THE SAVOY” _NO. 1_]
+
+[Illustration: THE BILLET-DOUX]
+
+Charles Conder also painted a rather indifferent portrait of Beardsley
+in oils which seems to have vanished. But the two finest portraits of
+Beardsley the man are word-portraits by Arthur Symons and Max Beerbohm.
+
+Symons speaks of Beardsley at this time as imagining himself to be
+“unable to draw anywhere but in England.” This was not necessarily an
+affectation of Beardsley’s as Symons seems to think; it is painfully
+common to the artistic temperament which often cannot work at all
+except in the atmosphere of its workshop.
+
+He was now working keenly at _The Savoy_ drawings and the illustrations
+for his bowdlerised _Under the Hill_, to be produced serially in that
+magazine. The first number was due to appear in December 1895, and the
+rich cover-design in black on the pink paper of the boards, showed,
+in somewhat indelicate fashion, Beardsley’s contempt for _The Yellow
+Book_, but the contempt had to be suppressed and a second edition of
+the cover printed instead. Though the prospectus for _The Savoy_,
+being done late in the autumn of 1895, announced the first number for
+December, _The Savoy_ eventually had to be put off until the New Year;
+meantime, about the Yuletide of 1895, Beardsley commenced work upon the
+famous sequence of masterpieces for _The Rape of the Lock_, announced
+for publication in February, and which we know was being sold in March.
+
+In January 1896 _The Savoy_ appeared, and made a sensation in the art
+world only to be compared with the public sensation of _The Yellow
+Book_. It was a revelation of genius. It thrust Beardsley forward
+with a prodigious stride. The fine cover design, the ivory-like
+beauty of the superb Title Page--the two black-masked figures in white
+before a dressing table--the deft witty verses of the naughty _Three
+Musicians_, the _Bathers on Dieppe Beach_, the three sumptuously rich
+designs of _The Abbé_, the _Toilet of Helen_, and _The Fruit-bearers_
+for the novel _Under the Hill_ which began in this number, capped by
+the stately _Christmas Card_ of _The Madonna and Child_ lifted the new
+magazine at a stroke into the rank of the books of the year.
+
+The great French engravers of the 18th century, St. Aubin and the rest,
+with the high achievement of the Illustrators of the ’Sixties which
+Gleeson White constantly kept before Beardsley’s eyes, had guided him
+to a craftsmanship of such musical intensity that he had evolved from
+it all, ’prenticed to it by the facility acquired from his _Morte
+d’Arthur_ experience, an art that was pure music. It was a revelation
+even to us who were well versed in Beardsley’s achievement. And the
+artistic and literary society of London had scarce recovered breath
+from its astonishment when about the end of February there appeared
+the masterpieces of Beardsley’s illustrations to _The Rape of the
+Lock_--masterpieces of design and of mood that set Beardsley in the
+first rank, from the beautiful cover to the cul-de-lampe, _The New
+Star_--with the sumptuous and epoch-making drawings of _The Dream_, the
+exquisite _Billet-Doux_, the _Toilet_, the _Baron’s Prayer_, and the
+magnificent _Rape of the Lock_ and _Battle of the Beaux and Belles_.
+
+[Illustration: THE TOILET]
+
+[Illustration: THE RAPE OF THE LOCK]
+
+The advance in art is prodigious. We now find Beardsley, on returning
+to the influences which were his true inspiration, at once coming
+nearer to nature, and, most interesting of all, employing line in an
+extraordinarily skilful way to represent material surfaces--we find
+silks and satins, brocades and furs, ormulu and wood, stone and metal,
+each being uttered into our senses by line absolutely attune to
+and interpretive of their surface and fibre and quality. We find a
+freedom of arrangement and a largeness of composition that increase his
+design as an orchestra is greater than its individual instruments. In
+the two drawings of _The Rape of the Lock_ and _The Battle of the Beaux
+and Belles_ it is interesting to note with what consummate skill the
+white flesh of the beauties is suggested by the sheer wizardry of the
+single enveloping line; with what skill of dotted line he expresses the
+muslins and gossamer fabrics; with what unerring power the silks and
+satins and brocades are rendered, all as distinctly rendered materially
+as the hair of the perukes; but above all and dominating all is the
+cohesion and one-ness of the orchestration in giving forth the mood of
+the thing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By grim destiny it was so ordained that this triumph of Beardsley’s
+life should come to him in bitter anguish. He was in Brussels in the
+February of 1896 when he had a bad breakdown. It came as a hideous
+scare to him. He lay seriously ill at Brussels for some considerable
+time. Returning to England in May, he was thenceforth to start upon
+that desperate flitting from the close pursuit by death that only ended
+in the grave. He determined to get the best opinion in London on his
+state--he was about to learn the dread verdict.
+
+The second number of _The Savoy_ appeared in April, as a quarterly,
+and its charming cover-design of _Choosing the New Hat_ screened a
+sad falling off in the output of the stricken man--for the number
+contained but the _Footnote portrait of himself_; the _Third Tableau
+of “Das Rheingold”_ which he had probably already done before going
+to Brussels; a scene from _The Rape of the Lock_; and but one
+illustration to _Under the Hill_, the _Ecstasy of Saint Rose of Lima_;
+whilst the beautiful Title Page of No. I had to do duty again for No.
+II--in all but four new drawings!
+
+Beardsley struggled through May with a cover for the next--the
+third--number of The Savoy to appear in July, _the driving of Cupid
+from the Garden_, and worked upon the poem of the _Ballad of a Barber_,
+making the wonderful line drawing for it called _The Coiffing_, with a
+silhouette _cul-de-lampe_ of _Cupid with the gallows_; but his body was
+rapidly breaking down.
+
+On the 5th of June he was at 17 Campden Grove, Kensington, writing the
+letter which announces the news that was his Death Warrant, in which
+Dr. Symes Thompson pronounced very unfavourably on his condition this
+day, and ordered absolute quiet and if possible immediate change,
+wringing from the afflicted man the anguished cry: “I am beginning
+to be really depressed and frightened about myself.” From this dread
+he was henceforth destined never to be wholly free. It was to stand
+within the shadows of his room wheresoever he went. He was about to
+start upon that flight to escape from it that was to be the rest of his
+wayfaring; but he no sooner flits to a new place than he sees it taking
+stealthy possession of the shadows almost within reach of his hand. It
+is now become for Beardsley a question of how long he can flit from the
+Reaper, or by what calculated stratagem he can keep him from his side
+if but for a little while.... In this June of 1896 was written that
+“_Note_” for the July _Savoy, No. 3_, announcing the end of _Under the
+Hill_--Beardsley has made his first surrender.
+
+[Illustration: THE BATTLE OF THE BEAUX AND THE BELLES]
+
+[Illustration: THE BARON’S PRAYER]
+
+So in mid-1896, on the edge of twenty-four, Beardsley began his last
+restless journey, flitting from place to place to rid himself of the
+terror. It was not the least bitter part of this wayfaring that he had
+to turn his back on London town. It has always been one of the
+fatuous falsities of a certain group of Beardsley’s apologists to write
+as if London had ignored him, and to infer that he owed his recognition
+to alien peoples--it was London that found him, London that raised
+him to a dizzy eminence even beyond his stature in art, as Beardsley
+himself feared; and to Beardsley London was the hub of the world. It
+was the London of electric-lit streets in which flaunted brazenly the
+bedizened and besmirched women and men, painted and overdressed for
+the hectic part they played in the tangle of living, if you will; but
+it was the London that Beardsley loved above all the world. And though
+Beardsley had had to sell his home in London, he carried his spiritual
+home with him--clung to a few beloved pieces of Chippendale furniture
+and to his books and the inspiration of his genius--the engravings
+after Watteau, Lancret, Pater, Prud’hon, and the like; above all he
+clung to the two old Empire ormulu candle-sticks without which he was
+never happy at his work.
+
+By the 6th of July he had moved to the Spread Eagle Hotel at Epsom;
+where he set to work on illustrating _Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves_
+as a Christmas Book--for which presumably was the fine _Ali Baba in the
+Wood_. But sadly enough, the poor stricken fellow is now fretted by his
+“entire inability to walk or exert himself in the least.” Suddenly he
+bends all his powers on illustrating _Lysistrata_! and in this July of
+1896, broken by disease, he pours out such blithe and masterly drawings
+for the _Lysistrata_ as would have made any man’s reputation--but alas!
+masterpieces so obscene that they could only be printed privately.
+However, the attacks of hemorrhage from the lungs were now very severe,
+and the plagued man had to prepare for another move--it is a miracle
+that, with death staring him in the face, and with his tormented
+body torn with disease, Beardsley could have brought forth these gay
+lyrical drawings wrought with such consummate skill that unfortunately
+the world at large can never look upon--the _Lysistrata_. It is almost
+unthinkable that Beardsley’s mind could have allowed his exquisite
+art to waste itself upon the frank obscenity which he knew, when he
+drew these wonderful designs, must render them utterly impossible for
+publication--that he should have deliberately sacrificed so much to
+the naughtinesses. Yet as art they are of a high order--they utter
+the emotions of unbridled sexuality in reckless fashion--their very
+mastery renders them the more impossible to publish. He knew himself
+full well that the work was masterwork--“I have just completed a set of
+illustrations to Lysistrata, I think they are in a way the best things
+I have ever done,” he writes to his friend the priest, John Gray,
+who is now striving his hardest to win him into the Roman Catholic
+Church. Gray realises that the end is near. Beardsley planned that the
+_Lysistrata_ should be printed in pale purple.... It was probable that
+Beardsley reached the _Lysistrata_ of Aristophanes through the French
+translation of Maurice Donnay--he was so anxious to assert that the
+purple illustrations were to appear with the work of Aristophanes in
+book form, not with Donnay’s translation! The _Lysistrata_ finished, he
+turned to the translation and obscene illustration of the _Sixth Satire
+of Juvenal_.
+
+But even before the month of July was out, he had to be packed off
+hurriedly to Pier View, Boscombe, by Bournemouth, where, in a sad
+state of health, he passed his twenty-fourth birthday. The place made
+his breathing easier, but the doctor is “afraid he cannot stop the
+mischief.” Beardsley found relief--in the _Juvenal_ drawings! “I am
+beginning to feel that I shall be an exile from all nice places for
+the rest of my days,” he writes pathetically. He loathed Boscombe.
+
+[Illustration: THE COIFFING]
+
+[Illustration: COVER DESIGN FOR “THE SAVOY” _NO_. 4.]
+
+With the July number, _No. 3_, _The Savoy_ became a monthly magazine;
+and there is no doubt that its monthly appearance did much to arouse
+Beardsley to spurts of effort to make drawings, for he had an almost
+passionate love for the magazine. Yet this July that gave us the
+_Lysistrata_ sequence only yielded the fine cover for the August
+_Savoy, No. 4_--but what a cover! To think that Beardsley drew this
+beautiful design of the lady beside a stand with grapes, beyond a gauze
+curtain, in the same month that he drew the _Lysistrata_ sequence, and
+that it is the only design that could be published! It at least gives
+the world a hint of what it lost.
+
+August at Boscombe yielded but the richly wrought cover of the Two
+Figures and the Terminal god beside a dark lake, for the _September
+Savoy, No. 5_, which he stupidly signed Giulio Floriani, and the
+uninteresting commonplace wash drawing in white on brown paper of _The
+Woman in White_ which he had made from the _Bon Mots_ line drawing long
+before--there was now much searching amongst the drawings and scraps
+lying in the portfolio. But in spite of a racked body, the cover-design
+showed him at his most sumptuous employment of black and white.
+
+It should be noticed that from his twenty-fourth birthday, after
+signing the farcical Giulio Floriani, he thenceforth signs his work
+with his initials A. B., in plain letters, usually in a corner of his
+drawing within, or without, a small square label. It is true that three
+drawings made after his twenty-fourth birthday bear his full name, but
+they were all made at this time. The Wagnerian musical drawings were
+most of them “in hand,” but Smithers and Beardsley agreed that they
+should not be “unloaded” in a bunch, but made to trickle through the
+issues of _The Savoy_ so as to prevent a sense of monotony--we shall
+see before the year is out that they had to be “unloaded in a bunch” at
+the last. It is therefore not safe to date any Wagnerian drawings with
+the month of their issue. It is better to go by the form of signature.
+Then again Beardsley’s hideous fight for life had begun, and Arthur
+Symons was in a difficulty as to how many drawings he might get from
+month to month, though there was always a Wagner to count upon as at
+least one. The full signatures on the _Death of Pierrot_ and the _Cover
+for the Book of Fifty Drawings_ are the last signatures in full; and
+both were drawn in early September soon after his birthday, as we are
+about to see.
+
+Beardsley unfortunately went up to London in this August on urgent
+business, and had a serious breakdown by consequence, with return of
+the bleeding from the lungs--a train journey always upset him. He had
+to keep his room at Boscombe for weeks. And he was in so enfeebled a
+state that the doctors decided to let him risk the winter at Boscombe
+as he was now too weak to travel to the South of France. A despairing
+cry escapes his lips again: “It seems I shall never be out of the wood.”
+
+The end of August and early September yielded the pathetic _Death of
+Pierrot_ that seems a prophecy of his own near end on which he was now
+brooding night and day. His strength failed him for a Cover design,
+so the powerful _Fourth Tableau of “Das Rheingold”_ had to be used
+as a cover for the October _Savoy No. 5_. The _Death of Pierrot_ is
+wonderful for the hush a-tiptoe of its stealthy-footed movement and the
+sense of the passion of Pierrot, as it is remarkable for the unusual
+literary beauty of its written legend.
+
+[Illustration: COVER DESIGN FOR “THE SAVOY” _NO_. 7.]
+
+[Illustration: FRONTISPIECE TO “PIERROT OF THE MINUTE”]
+
+
+September brought snow to Boscombe, which boded ill for Beardsley’s
+winter.
+
+It was in this September that Leonard Smithers, opened his new offices
+at 4 and 5 Royal Arcade, Bond Street, whither he had moved from the
+first offices of _The Savoy_ at Effingham House, Arundel Street,
+Strand; and it was now from his office and shop in the Royal Arcade
+that he proposed to Beardsley the collecting of his best works already
+done, and their publication in an _Album of Fifty Drawings_, to appear
+in the Autumn. The scheme, which greatly delighted Beardsley in his
+suffering state, would hold little bad omen in its suggestion of the
+end of a career to a man who had himself just drawn the _Death of
+Pierrot_. It roused him to the congenial effort of drawing the _Cover
+for A Book of Fifty Drawings_. The fifty drawings were collected and
+chosen with great care and huge interest by Beardsley, and this makes
+it clear that he had drawn about this time, in or before September,
+the beautifully designed if somewhat suggestive _Bookplate of the
+Artist_ for himself which appeared later as almost the last of the
+Fifty Drawings. In spite of Beardsley’s excitement and enthusiasm,
+however, the book dragged on to near Christmas time, owing largely
+to the delay caused by the difficulties that strewed Vallance’s path
+in drawing up and completing the iconography. It is a proof of the
+extraordinary influences which trivial and unforeseen acts may have
+upon a man’s career that the moving of Smithers to the Royal Arcade
+greatly extended Beardsley’s public, as his latest work was at once on
+view to passers-by who frequented this fashionable resort.
+
+The October of 1896 saw Beardsley draw the delightful _Cover for the
+November Savoy, No. 7_, of spectacled old age boring youth “by the
+book” (there was much chatter at this time over Ibsen’s phrase of
+“Youth is knocking at the Gate”). Beardsley also wrote the beautiful
+translation, and made the even more beautiful and famous drawing _Ave
+atque Vale_ or “Hail and Farewell” for the _Carmen C I of Catullus_,
+whilst the third illustration for the November _Savoy_, the small
+_Tristan and Isolde_, shows his interest maintained in the musical
+sequence that was ever present in his thoughts, and which he intended
+to be gathered into book-form. Indeed, the whole of this October,
+Beardsley was at work writing a narrative version of Wagner’s _Das
+Rheingold_, “most of the illustrations being already finished,” as he
+himself testifies. Dent, to whom he had sent the drawing of _Tannhäuser
+returning to the Horselberg_, was trying to induce Beardsley at this
+time to illustrate the _Pilgrim’s Progress_ for him. The month of
+October had opened for Beardsley happy and cheerful over a bright fire
+with books; it went out in terror for him. He fights hard to clamber
+from the edge of the grave that yawns, and he clutches at gravelly
+ground. A fortnight’s bleeding from the lungs terrified him. “I am
+quite paralysed with fear,” he cries--“I have told no one of it. It’s
+so dreadful to be so weak as I am becoming. Today I had hoped to pilfer
+ships and seashores from Claude, but work is out of the question.” Yet
+before the last of October he was more hopeful again and took “quite a
+long walk and was scarcely tired at all afterwards. So my fortnight’s
+bleeding does not seem to have done me much injury.” His only distress
+made manifest was that he could not see his sister Mabel, about to
+start on her American theatrical tour.
+
+[Illustration: HEADPIECE: PIERROT WITH THE HOUR-GLASS]
+
+[Illustration: TAILPIECE TO “PIERROT OF THE MINUTE”]
+
+November was to be rich in achievement for Aubrey Beardsley. It was
+to see him give to the world one of the most perfect designs that
+ever came from his hands, a design that seems to sum up and crown the
+achievement of this great period of his art--he writes that he has
+just finished “rather a pretty set of drawings for a foolish playlet
+of Ernest Dowson’s, _The Pierrot of the Minute_” which was published
+in the following year of 1897--a grim irony that a boredom should have
+brought forth such beauty! As he writes Finis to this exquisite work,
+he begs for a good book to illustrate! Yet on the 5th of this November
+a cry of despair escapes him: “Neither rest or fine weather seem to
+avail anything.”
+
+There is something pathetic in this eager search for a book to
+illustrate at a moment when Beardsley has achieved the færy of one
+design in particular of the several good designs in the _Pierrot of
+the Minute_, that “_cul-de-lampe_” in which Pierrot, his jesting
+done, is leaving the garden, the beauty and hauntingness of the thing
+wondrously enhanced by the dotted tracery of its enclosing framework--a
+tragic comment on the wonderful _Headpiece_ when Pierrot holds up the
+hour-glass with its sands near run out. It is a sigh, close on a sob,
+blown across a sheet of white paper as by magic rather than the work of
+human hands.
+
+It was in this November that there appeared the futile essay on
+Beardsley by Margaret Armour which left Beardsley cold except for the
+appearance of his own _Outline Profile Portrait of himself in line_,
+“an atrocious portrait of me,” which he seems to have detested for some
+reason difficult to plumb--it is neither good nor bad, and certainly
+not worse than one or two things that he passed with approval at this
+time for the _Book of Fifty Drawings_. It is a pathetically tragic
+thought that the November of the exquisite _Pierrot of the Minute_ was
+for Beardsley a month of terrible suffering. He had not left his room
+for six weeks. Yet, for all his sad state, he fervently clings to the
+belief that change will rid him of that gaunt spectre that flits about
+the shadows of his room. “I still continue in a very doubtful state,
+a sort of helpless, hopeless condition, as nobody really seems to know
+what is the matter with me. I fancy it is only change I want, & that
+my troubles are principally nervous.... It is nearly six weeks now
+since I have left my room. I am busy with drawing & should like to be
+with writing, but cannot manage both in my weak state.” He complains
+bitterly of the wretched weather. “I have fallen into a depressed
+state,” and “Boscombe is ignominiously dull.”
+
+It was now that Beardsley himself saw, for the first time, the
+published prints for the cover and the title-page of _Evelina_--of his
+“own early designing.”
+
+The _Savoy_ for December gives us some clue to the busy work upon
+drawings in November of which he speaks, but some of the drawings that
+now appeared were probably done somewhat before this time.
+
+It was soon clear that the days of _The Savoy_ were numbered and the
+editor and publisher decided that the December number must be the
+last. The farewell address to the public sets down the lack of public
+support as the sole reason; but it was deeper than that. Beardsley,
+spurred to it by regret, put forth all his remaining powers to make it
+a great last number if it must be so. For he drew one of the richest
+and most sumptuous of his works, the beautiful _A Répétition of Tristan
+and Isolde_--and he flung into the number all the drawings he now
+made or had made for _Das Rheingold_, which included the marvellously
+decorative _Frontispiece for the Comedy of The Rheingold_, that
+“sings” with colour, and which he dated 1897, as he often post-dated
+his drawings, revealing that he had intended the long-cherished book
+for the following year; but the other designs for the Comedy are the
+unimportant fragments _Flosshilde_ and _Erda_ and _Alberich_, which he,
+as likely as not, had by him, as it was in October that he wrote
+of “most of the illustrations being finished.” He now drew his two
+portraits of musicians, the _Mendelssohn_ and the _Weber_; he somewhat
+fumbles with his _Don Juan, Sganarelle, and the Beggar_ from that _Don
+Juan_ of Moliere which he had ever been eager to illustrate; he gives
+us the _Mrs. Margery Pinchwife_ from Wycherley’s _Country Wife_; he
+very sadly disappoints us with his _Count Valmont_ from Laclos’ _Les
+Liaisons Dangereuses_ for the illustration of which Beardsley had held
+out such high hopes; and he ends with _Et in Arcadia Ego_.
+
+[Illustration: A RÉPÉTITION OF “TRISTAN UND ISOLDE”]
+
+[Illustration: FRONTISPIECE]
+
+It does the public little credit that there was such scant support for
+_The Savoy_ that it had to die. The farewell note to the last number
+announces that _The Savoy_ is in future to be half-yearly and a much
+higher price. But it was never to be. After all, everything depended on
+Beardsley, and poor Beardsley’s sands were near run out.
+
+Meantime Beardsley had been constantly fretting at the delay in the
+appearance of _The Book of Fifty Drawings_ which he had completed
+in September, in spite of the date 1897 on the cover-design--an
+afterthought of Smithers, who as a matter of fact sent me an advance
+copy at Beardsley’s request in December 1896.
+
+The December _Savoy_, then, No. 8 and the last, saw Beardsley unload
+all his Wagnerian drawings. Through the month he was toying with the
+idea of illustrating translations of two of his favourite books, _Les
+Liaisons Dangereuses_ by Laclos, and Stendhal’s _Adolphe_....
+
+On a Sunday, early in December, he spent the afternoon “interviewing
+himself for _The Idler_”--the interview that appeared in that magazine,
+shaped and finished by Lawrence in March 1897.
+
+About Christmas his edition of _Les Liaisons Dangereuses_ was taking
+shape in his brain with its scheme for initial letters to each of the
+170 letters, and ten full-page illustrations, and a frontispiece to
+each of the two volumes; but it was to get no further than Beardsley’s
+enthusiasm. At this Yuletide appeared _The Book of Fifty Drawings_,
+in which for the first time were seen the _Ali Baba in the Wood_, the
+_Bookplate of the Artist_, and the _Atalanta in Calydon_ with the
+hound. This book holds the significant revelation of Beardsley’s own
+estimate of his achievement up to this time, for he chose his fifty
+best drawings; it holds therefore the amusing confession that he did
+not always know what was his best work. It is interesting to note that
+Beardsley includes the mediocre and commonplace _Merlin_ in a circle,
+yet omits some of his finest designs. It is all the more interesting
+in that Beardsley not only laid a ban on a considerable amount of his
+early work, but made Smithers give him his solemn oath and covenant
+that he would never allow to be published, if he could prevent it,
+certain definite drawings--he particularly forbade anything from
+the _Scrap Book_ then belonging to Ross, for he shrewdly suspected
+Ross’s malicious thwarting of every endeavour on Beardsley’s behalf to
+exchange good, and even late drawings, for these early commonplaces
+and inadequacies. And Smithers to my certain knowledge had in my
+presence solemnly vowed to prevent such publication. When Beardsley
+was dead, it is only fair to Smithers to say that he did resist the
+temptation until Ross basely overpersuaded him to the scandalous
+betrayal. However that was not as yet.... Evidently, though the fifty
+drawings were selected and decided upon in September, Beardsley changed
+one October drawing for something thrown out, for the October _Ave
+atque Vale_ appears; and it may be that the _Atalanta in Calydon with
+the hound_, sometimes called _Diana_, and the Beardsley _Bookplate_
+together with the _Self-portrait silhouette_ that makes the Finis to
+the Iconography, may have been done as late, and replaced other
+drawings. Beardsley dedicated the book of his collected achievement to
+the man who had stood by him in fair weather and in foul from the very
+beginning--Joseph Pennell. It was the least he could do.
+
+[Illustration: ATALANTA--WITH THE HOUND]
+
+[Illustration: BEARDSLEY’S BOOK PLATE]
+
+December had begun with more hope for Beardsley--his lung gave him
+little or no trouble; he “suffers from Boscombe more than anything
+else.” And even though a sharp walk left him breathless, he felt
+he could scarcely call himself an invalid now, but the walk made
+him nervous. He is even looking forward to starting housekeeping in
+London again, with his sister; he hungers for town; indeed would be
+“abjectly thankful for the smallest gaieties & pleasures in town.”
+And were it not that he was nervous about taking walks abroad, he was
+becoming quite hopeful again when--taking a walk about New Year’s Eve
+he suddenly broke down; he “had some way to walk in a dreadful state”
+before he could get any help. And he began the New Year with the bitter
+cry: “So it all begins over again. It’s so disheartening.” He had
+“collapsed in all directions,” and it was decided to take him to some
+more bracing place as soon as he was fit to be moved.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So ended the great _Savoy_ period! Beardsley’s triumphs seemed fated to
+the span of twelve moons.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+THE GREAT PERIOD
+
+ESSAYS IN WASH AND LINE
+
+1897 to the End--Twenty-Five
+
+II. THE AQUATINTESQUES
+
+
+So ill-health like a sleuth-hound dogged the fearful man. Beardsley was
+now twenty-four and a half years of age--the great _Savoy_ achievement
+at an end.
+
+The Yuletide of 1896 had gone out; and the New Year of 1897 came in
+amidst manifold terrors for Aubrey Beardsley. All hopes of carrying on
+_The Savoy_ had to be abandoned. Beardsley’s condition was so serious
+at the New Year that he had to be moved from Pier View to a house
+called Muriel in Exeter Road at Bournemouth, where the change seemed
+to raise his spirits and mend his health awhile. He was very funny
+about the name of his new lodgings: “I suffer a little from the name of
+this house, I feel as shy of my address as a boy at school is of his
+Christian name when it is Ebenezer or Aubrey,” he writes whimsically.
+He began to find so much relief at Muriel, notwithstanding, that he was
+soon planning to have rooms in London again--at Manchester Street.
+
+[Illustration: THE LADY WITH THE MONKEY]
+
+By the February he was benefited by the change, for he was “sketching
+out pictures to be finished later,” and is delighted with Boussod
+Valadon’s reproduction in gravure of his _Frontispiece_ for
+Theophile Gautier’s _Mademoiselle de Maupin_, for which he was now
+making the half-dozen beautiful line and wash drawings, in the style of
+the old aquatint-engravers. These wonderful drawings done--scant wonder
+that he vowed that Boussod Valadon should ever after reproduce his
+works!--he employed the same craftsmanship for the famous _Bookplate
+for Miss Custance_, later the wife of Lord Alfred Douglas, and he also
+designed the _Arbuscula_ for Gaston Vuillier’s _History of Dancing_.
+For sheer beauty of handling, these works reveal powers in Beardsley’s
+keeping and reach which make the silencing of them by death one of
+the most hideous tragedies in art. The music that they hold, the
+subtlety of emotional statement, and the sense of colour that suffuses
+them, raise Beardsley to the heights. It is a bewildering display of
+Beardsley’s artistic courage, impossible to exaggerate, that he should
+have created these blithe masterpieces, a dying man.
+
+Suddenly the shadows were filled with terrors again. The bleeding had
+almost entirely ceased from his lung when his liver started copious
+bleeding instead. It frightened the poor distressed man dreadfully, and
+made him too weak and nervous to face anything. A day or two afterwards
+he was laughing at his fears of yesterday. A burst of sunshine makes
+the world a bright place to live in; but he sits by the fire and dreads
+to go out. “At present my mind is divided between the fear of getting
+too far away from England, & the fear of not getting enough sunshine,
+or rather warmth near home.” But the doctors had evidently said more
+to Mrs. Beardsley than to her son, for his mother decided now and in
+future to be by Beardsley’s side. Almost the last day of February saw
+his doctor take him out to a concert--a great joy to the stricken
+man--and no harm done.
+
+In March he was struggling against his failing body’s fatigue to draw.
+He also started a short story _The Celestial Lover_, for which he was
+making a coloured picture; for he had bought a paint-box. March turned
+cold, and Beardsley had a serious set-back. The doctor pursed a serious
+lip over his promise to let him go up to town--to Beardsley’s bitter
+disappointment. The doctor now urged a move to the South--if only even
+to Brittany. Beardsley began to realise that the shadows in his room
+were again haunted; “I fancy I can count my life by months now.” Yet a
+day or two later, “Such blessed weather to-day, trees in all directions
+are putting forth leaves.” Then March went out with cold winds, and
+bleeding began again, flinging back the poor distracted fellow amongst
+the terrors. He wrote from his bed and in pencil: “Oh how tired I am
+of hearing my lung creak all day, like a badly made pair of boots....
+I think of the past winter and autumn with unrelieved bitterness.” The
+move to London for the South was at last decided upon, for the first
+week in April--to the South of France by easy stages. He knew now that
+he could never be cured, but he hoped that the ravages of the disease
+could be prevented from becoming rapid.
+
+On the 30th of March in a letter to his friend John Gray, now even more
+eager to win him to the Church of Rome, he pleads that he ought to have
+the right to beg for a few months more of life--“Don’t think me foolish
+to haggle about a few months”--as he has two or three pictured short
+stories he wants to bring out; but on the following day, Wednesday the
+31st of March 1897, he was received into the Roman Catholic Church--on
+the Friday after, the 2nd of April, he took the Sacrament which had to
+be brought to him, to his great grief, since he could not go to the
+Church. He was to be a Roman Catholic for near upon a twelvemonth.
+From this day of his entering the Church of Rome he wrote to John Gray
+as “My dear brother.”
+
+There is something uncanny in the aloofness of Beardsley’s art from
+his life and soul. His art gives no slightest trace of spiritual
+upheaval. It is almost incredible that a man, if he were really going
+through an emotional spiritual upheaval or ecstasy, could have been
+drawing the designs for _Mademoiselle de Maupin_, or indeed steeping
+in that novel at all, or drawing the _Arbuscula_. For months he has
+been led by the friendship of the priest John Gray towards Holy Church;
+yet it is not six months since he has put the last touches on _Under
+the Hill!_ and drawn the designs for _Lysistrata_ and the _Juvenal!_
+not five months since he has drawn his _Bookplate!_ And by the grim
+irony of circumstance, he entered the Church of Rome in the same
+month that there appeared in _The Idler_ his confession: “To my mind
+there is nothing so depressing as a Gothic Cathedral. I hate to have
+the sun shut out by the saints.” This interview in the March _Idler_
+by Lawrence, one of the best interviewers of this time, who made the
+framework and then with astute skill persuaded Beardsley to fill in
+the details, was as we know from Beardsley’s own letters to his friend
+John Gray, written by himself about the Yuletide of the winter just
+departing. That interview will therefore remain always as an important
+evidence by Beardsley of his artistic ideals and aims and tastes. It
+is true that he posed and strutted in that interview; and, having
+despatched it, was a little ashamed of it, with a nervous “hope I
+have not said too many foolish things.” But it is a baffling tribute
+to the complexity of the human soul that the correspondence with the
+poet-priest John Gray proves that whilst John Gray, whose letters are
+hidden from us, was leading Beardsley on his spiritual journey to
+Rome, he was lending him books and interesting him in books, side by
+side with lives of the saints, which were scarcely remarkable for their
+fellowship with the saints.
+
+Beardsley was rapidly failing. On Wednesday, the 7th of April, a week
+after joining the Church of Rome, he passed through London, staying
+a day or two at the Windsor Hotel--a happy halt for Beardsley as his
+friend John Gray was there to meet him--and crossed to France, where
+on Saturday the 18th of April he wrote from the Hotel Voltaire, quai
+Voltaire, in Paris, reporting his arrival with his devoted mother.
+Paris brought back hope and cheerfulness to the doomed man. He loved to
+be in Paris; and it was in his rooms at this hotel that in May he was
+reading _The Hundred and One Nights_ for the first time, and inspired
+by it, drew his famous _Cover for Ali Baba_, a masterpiece of musical
+line, portraying a seated obese voluptuous Eastern figure resplendent
+with gems--as Beardsley himself put it, “quite a sumptuous design.”
+
+Beardsley had left Bournemouth in a state of delight at the prospect
+of getting to the South of France into the warmth and the sunshine. He
+felt that it would cure him and cheat the grave. In Paris he was soon
+able to walk abroad and to be out of doors again--perhaps it had been
+better otherwise, for he might then have gone further to the sun. There
+was the near prospect also of his sister, Mabel Beardsley’s return
+from America and their early meeting. He could now write from a café:
+“I rejoice greatly at being here again.” And though he could not get a
+sitting-room at the hotel, his bed was in an alcove which, being shut
+off by a curtain, left him the possession by day of a sitting-room and
+thereby rid him of the obsession of a sick room--he could forget he
+was a sick man. And though the hotel was without a lift, the waiters
+would carry him up stairs--he could not risk the climbing. And the
+bookshops and print-shops of Paris were an eternal joy to him.
+
+[Illustration: COVER DESIGN FOR “THE FORTY THIEVES”]
+
+With returning happiness he was eating and drinking and sleeping
+better. He reads much of the lives of the saints; is comforted by his
+new religion; reads works of piety, and--goes on his way poring over
+naughtinesses. But he has thrust the threatening figure of death out of
+his room awhile--talks even of getting strong again quite soon.
+
+But the usually genial month of May in Paris came in sadly for
+Beardsley, and the sombre threat flitted back into the shadows of
+his room again. He had the guard of an excellent physician, and the
+following day he felt well again; but he begs Gray to pray for him.
+A month to St. Germain-en-Laye, just outside Paris, was advised;
+and Beardsley, going out to see the place, was delighted with its
+picturesqueness--indeed St. Germain-en-Laye was an ideal place to
+inspire him to fresh designs. The Terrace and Park and the Hotel itself
+breathe the romance of the 18th and 17th centuries. Above all the air
+was to make a new man of him.
+
+The young fellow felt a pang at leaving Paris, where Gray had secured
+him the friendship of Octave Uzanne and other literary celebrities. And
+the railway journey, short as it was, to and fro, from St. Germain,
+upset Beardsley as railway travelling always did. It cautioned care.
+
+Before May was out, Beardsley moved out to St. Germain-en-Laye,
+where he found pleasant rooms at the Pavilion Louis XIV, in the rue
+de Pointoise. The place was a joy to him. But the last day of May
+drove him to consult a famous physician about his tongue, which was
+giving him trouble; the great man raised his hopes to radiant pitch by
+assuring him that he might get quite rid of his disease even yet--if he
+went to the mountains and avoided such places as Bournemouth and the
+South of France! He advised rigorous treatment whilst at St. Germain.
+However his drastic treatment of rising at cockcrow for a walk in the
+forest and early to bed seems to have upset Beardsley’s creaking body.
+The following day, the first of June, the bleeding of the lungs started
+again and made him wretched. The arrival of his sister, however, was a
+delight to him, and concerning this he wrote his delicious waggery that
+she showed only occasional touches of “an accent which I am sure she
+has only acquired since she left America.” His health at once improved
+with his better spirits.
+
+Beardsley read at St. Germain one of the few books by a living
+genius of which we have any record of his reading, Meredith’s _Evan
+Harrington_; it was about the time that the _Mercure_ published in
+French the _Essay on Comedy_ which started widespread interest in the
+works of Meredith.
+
+By mid-June Beardsley was greatly cheered; “everyone in the hotel
+notices how much I have improved in the last few days”; but his sitting
+out in the forest was near done. A cold snap shrivelled him, and
+lowered his vitality; a hot wave raised his hopes, only to be chilled
+again; and then sleep deserted him. On the 2nd of July he made a
+journey into Paris to get further medical advice; he had been advised
+to make for the sea and it had appealed to him. His hopes were raised
+by the doctor’s confidence in the cure by good climates, and Beardsley
+decided on Dieppe. Egypt was urged upon him, but probably the means
+forbade.
+
+[Illustration: ALI BABA IN THE WOOD]
+
+Thus, scarce a month after he had gone to St. Germain in high hopes,
+Beardsley on the 6th of July was ordered to Dieppe, whence he wrote of
+his arrival on the 12th of July at the Hotel Sandwich in the rue Halle
+au Blé. He was so favoured with splendid weather that he was out and
+about again; and he was reading and writing. Fritz Thaulow’s family
+welcomed him back. He scarcely dares to boast of his improved health,
+it has seemed to bring ill-luck so often. But best of all blessings,
+he was now able to work. It was in this August that he met Vincent
+O’Sullivan, the young writer. Here he spent his twenty-fifth birthday.
+Before the month was half through he was fretting to be back in Paris
+for the winter. September came in wet and cold. He found this Hotel
+rather exposed to the wind, and so was taken to more sheltered lodgings
+in the Hotel des Estrangers in the rue d’Aguado, hoping that Dieppe
+might still know a gentle September. Though the weather remained wet
+and cold, he kept well; but caution pointed to Paris. His London doctor
+came over to Dieppe on holiday, cheered him vastly with hopes of a
+complete recovery if he took care of himself, and advised Paris for the
+early winter. Beardsley, eager as he was for Paris, turned his back on
+Dieppe with a pang--he left many friends. However, late September saw
+him making for Paris with unfeigned joy, and settling in rooms at the
+Hotel Foyot in the rue Tournon near the Luxembourg Gardens.
+
+His arrival in his beloved Paris found Beardsley suffering again from
+a chill that kept him to his room; but he was hopeful. The doctor
+considered him curable still; he might have not only several years of
+life before him “but perhaps even a long life.” But the scorching heat
+of the days of his arrival in Paris failed to shake him free of the
+chill. Still, the fine weather cheered him and he was able to be much
+out of doors. Good food and turpentine baths aided; and he was--reading
+the _Memoirs of Casanova!_ But he had grown cautious; found that seeing
+many people tired him; and begs for some “happy and inspiring book.”
+But as October ran out, the doctors began to shake solemn heads--all
+the talk was henceforth of the South of France. “Every fresh person
+one meets has fresh places to suggest & fresh objections to the places
+we have already thought of. Yet I dare not linger late in Paris; but
+what a pity that I have to leave!” Biarritz was put aside on account of
+its Atlantic gales; Arcachon because pictures of it show it horribly
+“Bournemouthy.” The Sisters of the Sacré Cœur sent him a bottle of
+water from Lourdes. “Yet all the same I get dreadfully nervous, &
+stupidly worried about little things.” However, the doctors sternly
+forbade winter in Paris. November came in chilly, with fogs; and
+Beardsley felt it badly. The first week of November saw his mother
+taking him off southwards to the sun, and settling in the rooms at
+the Hotel Cosmopolitain at Mentone which was to be his last place of
+flitting.
+
+Yet Beardsley left Paris feeling “better and stronger than I have ever
+been since my school days”; but the fogs that drove him forth made him
+write his last ominous message from the Paris that he loved so well:
+“If I don’t take a decided turn for the better now I shall go down hill
+rather quickly.”
+
+At Mentone Beardsley felt happy enough. He liked the picturesque place.
+Free from hemorrhage, cheered by the sunshine, he rallied again and
+was rid of all pains in his lungs, was sleeping well, and eating well;
+was out almost all day; and people noticed the improvement in him, to
+his great glee. And he was busying himself with illustrations for Ben
+Jonson’s _Volpone_, and was keenly interested in a new venture by
+Smithers who proposed a successor to _The Savoy_ which he wished to
+call _The Peacock_.
+
+[Illustration: COVER DESIGN FOR “VOLPONE”]
+
+The mountain and the sea suited Beardsley. “I am much happier and more
+peaceful,” but “the mistral has not blown yet.”
+
+So, in this November of 1897 Beardsley wrought for the _Cover of
+Volpone_ one of the most wonderful decorative designs that ever brought
+splendour of gold on vellum to the cover of any mortal’s book. He also
+made a pen drawing for the _Cover of a prospectus for Volpone_, which
+was after his death published in the book as a _Frontispiece_, for
+which it was in no way intended and is quite unfitted, and concerning
+which he gave most explicit instructions that it should not appear
+in the book at all as he was done with the technique of it and had
+developed and created a new style for the book wholly unlike it. All
+the same, it might have been used without hurt to the other designs,
+or so it seems to me, as a Title Page, since _Volpone_ is lettered on
+a label upon it. Nevertheless Beardsley never intended nor desired nor
+would have permitted that it should appear in the body of the book at
+all; for it is, as he points out, quite out of keeping with the whole
+style of the decorations. It was only to be employed as an attraction
+on the _Prospectus_. But in this _Prospectus Cover for Volpone_ his
+hand’s skill reveals no slightest hesitation nor weakness from his
+body’s sorry state--its lines are firmly drawn, almost to mechanical
+severity. And all the marvellous suggestion of material surfaces are
+there, the white robe of the bewigged figure who stands with hands
+raised palm to palm suppliant-wise--the dark polished wood of the gilt
+doorway--the fabric of the curtains--the glitter of precious metals and
+gems.
+
+In a letter to “dear Leonardo” of this time he sent a “complete list
+of drawings for the _Volpone_,” suggested its being made a companion
+volume to _The Rape of the Lock_, and asked Smithers to announce it
+in _The Athenæum_. Besides the now famous and beautiful _Cover_, he
+planned 24 subjects, as Smithers states in his dedication of _Volpone_
+to Beardsley’s mother, though the fine initials which he did execute
+are, strangely enough, not even mentioned in that list. He reveals that
+the frontispiece is to be, like the design of the prospectus, _Volpone
+and his treasure_, but that is to be in line and wash--obviously in
+the style of _The Lady and the Monkey_--yet strangely enough, the
+remaining 23 subjects he distinctly puts down as being in “line”! And
+it is in this letter that he promises “a line drawing for a Prospectus
+in a few days,” stating especially that it will be a less elaborate
+and line version of the _Frontispiece_--and that it is not to appear
+in the book. We have the line drawing for the _Prospectus_--and we can
+only guess what a fine thing would have been this same design treated
+in the manner of _The Lady and the Monkey_ or the _Initials_. That, in
+this list, 23 of the 24 designs were to be in line is a little baffling
+in face of the fact that the _Initials_ were in the new method, line
+with pencil employed like a wash, and that Beardsley himself definitely
+states, as we shall see in a letter written on the 19th of this month,
+that the drawings are a complete departure in method from anything he
+had yet done, which the _Initials_ certainly were.
+
+On the 8th of December, Beardsley wrote to “friend Smithers,” sending
+the _Cover Design for Volpone_ and the _Design for the Prospectus
+of Volpone_, begging for proofs, especially of the _Design for the
+Prospectus_, “on various papers at once.” Smithers sent the proofs of
+the two blocks with a present of some volumes of Racine for Beardsley’s
+Christmas cheer. The beautiful _Miniature_ edition of _The_ _Rape of
+the Lock_, with Beardsley’s special _Cover-design in gold on scarlet_,
+had just been published--the “little Rapelets” as Beardsley called them.
+
+However, these 24 designs for the _Volpone_ were never to be. But we
+know something about them from a letter to Smithers, written on the
+19th of December, which he begins with reference to the new magazine
+of _The Peacock_ projected by Smithers, of which more later. Whilst
+delighted with the idea of editing _The Peacock_, Beardsley expresses
+fear lest the business and turmoil of the new venture may put the
+_Volpone_ into second place, and he begs that it shall not be so,
+that there shall be no delay in its production. He evidently sent the
+_Initials_ with this letter, for he underlines that _Volpone_ is to
+be an important book, as Smithers can judge from the drawings that
+Beardsley is now sending him--indeed the _Initials_ were, alas! all
+that he was ever destined to complete--the 24 illustrations were not to
+be. That these _Initials_ were the designs sent is further made clear
+by the remark that the new work is a complete, “a marked departure as
+illustrative and decorative work from any other arty book published
+for many years.” He pronounces in the most unmistakable terms that he
+has left behind him definitely all his former methods. He promises the
+drawings to be printed in the text by the first week in January, and
+that they shall be “good work, the best I have ever done.”
+
+On the morrow of Christmas, Beardsley was writing to Smithers,
+urging on the production of the _Prospectus for Volpone_; and it is
+interesting to find in this Yuletide letter that the fine drawing in
+line and wash, in his aquatint style, of _The Lady and the Monkey_,
+was originally intended for the _Volpone_ and not for the set of the
+_Mademoiselle de Maupin_ in which it eventually appeared; but was cast
+out of the _Volpone_ by Beardsley as “it will be quite out of keeping
+with the rest of the initials.” So that the style of the Initials was
+clearly the method he had intended to employ for his illustrations.
+
+What his remarkable creative fancy and dexterity of hand designed for
+the illustrations to _Volpone_ only _The Lady and the Monkey_ and the
+_Initials_ can hint to us--he was never to create them.
+
+The sunshine and the warmth, the picturesque surroundings of the place,
+the mountains and the sea, brought back hope to the plagued fellow; and
+again he clambered out of the grave. Languor and depression left him.
+He was on the edge of Yuletide and had known no cold or chill; indeed
+his only “grievance is mosquitoes.” He would weigh himself anxiously,
+fearful of a set-back at every turn.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now, a fantastically tragic fact of Beardsley’s strange career--a fact
+that Max Beerbohm alone of all those who have written upon Beardsley
+has noticed--was the very brief period of the public interest in him.
+Beardsley arose to a universal fame at a bound--with _The Yellow
+Book_; he fell from the vogue with as giddy a suddenness. With the
+last number of _The Savoy_ he had vanished from the public eye almost
+as though he had never been. The Press no longer recorded his doings;
+and his failure to keep the public interest with _The Savoy_, and all
+its superb achievement, left but a small literary and artistic coterie
+in London sufficiently interested in his doings to care or enquire
+whether he were alive or dead or sick or sorry, or even as to what
+new books he was producing. The _Book of Fifty Drawings_ seemed to
+have written Finis to his career. Nobody realised this, nor had better
+cause to realise it, than Leonard Smithers. It had been intended to
+continue _The Savoy_ in more expensive form as a half-yearly volume;
+but Smithers found that it was hopeless as a financial venture--it
+had all ended in smoke. Smithers was nevertheless determined to fan the
+public homage into life again with a new magazine the moment he thought
+it possible. And the significance of the now very rare “newspaper
+cutting” had not been lost upon Beardsley himself. So it had come about
+that Smithers had planned the new magazine, to be called _The Peacock_,
+to appear in the April of 1898, to take the place of _The Savoy_; and
+had keenly interested Beardsley in the venture. For once Beardsley’s
+flair for a good title failed him, and he would have changed the name
+of _The Peacock_ to _Books and Pictures_, which sounded commonplace
+enough to make _The Peacock_ appear quite good when otherwise it seemed
+somewhat pointless.
+
+[Illustration: INITIAL FOR “VOLPONE”]
+
+Beardsley’s letter of the 19th of December to Smithers was clearly in
+reply to the urging of Smithers that Beardsley should be the editor of
+his new magazine _The Peacock_ and should design the cover and whatever
+else was desired by Smithers. But Beardsley makes one unswerving
+condition, and but one--that “it is quite _agreed that Oscar Wilde
+contributes nothing to the magazine, anonymously, pseudonymously or
+otherwise_.” The underlining is Beardsley’s. Beardsley’s detestation
+of Wilde, and of all for which Wilde stood in the public eye, is the
+more pronounced seeing that both men had entered the Church of Rome
+with much publicity. Beardsley would not have Wilde in any association
+with him at any price.... Before Beardsley leaves the subject of
+_The Peacock_ he undertakes to design “a resplendent peacock in
+black and white” and reminds Smithers that he has “already some fine
+wash drawings” of his from which he can choose designs for the first
+number of the magazine. So that we at least know that this first
+number of _The Peacock_ was to have had a resplendent peacock in
+black and white for its cover, and that it was to have been adorned
+with the superb decorations for _Mademoiselle de Maupin_, the supreme
+artistic achievement of Beardsley’s resplendent skill. He outstripped
+in beauty of handling even his already exquisite craftsmanship: and
+it is the most tragic part of his tragedy of life that he was to die
+before he had given the world the further fulfilment of his wondrous
+artistry--leaving us wondering as to what further heights he might have
+scaled.
+
+Beardsley knew full well that these drawings in line and wash, in his
+“aquatint” style, were his supreme achievement.
+
+We know from a letter from Beardsley in this month that Smithers
+was still at his little office at No. 4, in the Royal Arcade, off
+Bond Street, whence Smithers sent me a coloured engraving of the
+_Mademoiselle de Maupin_, at Beardsley’s request, which had been
+beautifully reproduced in a very limited edition. Though Beardsley
+himself realised his weakness in oil painting, he would have made a
+mark in watercolours, employed with line, like coloured engravings.
+
+But the gods had willed that it should not be.
+
+Beardsley always had the astuteness to give great pains and care to
+the planning of his prospectuses--he watched over them with fatherly
+anxiety and solicitude. But what is less known is the very serious part
+he played on the literary editor’s side of the magazine of which he was
+art-editor. And in his advice to Smithers concerning the new venture of
+_The Peacock_, he has left to us not only the astute pre-vision upon
+which he insisted to Smithers, but he reveals his own tastes and ideals
+in very clear terms. The magazine, as he wisely warns Smithers, should
+not be produced “unless you have piles of stuff up your editorial
+sleeves.” And he proceeded to lay down with trenchant emphasis his
+ideals for the conduct of a magazine and, incidently, his opinions of
+the art and literature of the day, revealing a shrewd contempt for
+the pushful mediocrities who had elbowed their way into the columns
+of _The Yellow Book_ and even _The Savoy_. “The thing,” he writes,
+“must be edited with a savage strictness, and very definite ideas
+about everything get aired in it. Let us give birth to no more little
+backbone-less babies. A little well-directed talent is in a periodical
+infinitely more effective than any amount of sporadic and desultory
+genius (especially when there is no genius to be got).” Beardsley gives
+in more detail his mature attitude towards literature: “On the literary
+side, impressionistic criticism and poetry and cheap short-storyness
+should be gone for. I think the critical element should be paramount.
+Let verse be printed very sparingly.... I should advise you to let
+Gilbert Burgess do occasional things for us. Try to get together
+a staff. Oh for a Jeffreys or a Gibbon, or anybody with something
+to say.”... And then we get in definite terms his sympathies and
+antipathies in art--“On the art side, I suggest that it should attack
+_untiringly and unflinchingly_ the Burne-Jones and Morrisian mediæval
+business, and set up a wholesome 17th and 18th century standard of what
+picture making should be.”
+
+There we have Beardsley’s whole range and also, be it confessed, his
+limitations. To the 18th century he owed all; and on the edge of
+eternity, unreservedly, frankly, and honourably, he made the solemn
+confession of his artistic faith.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+THE END
+
+1898
+
+
+Yet the cruelty of Fate but more grimly pursued the stricken man with
+relentless step. December went out in “a pitiless drench of rain.” It
+kept Beardsley indoors. A week of it gave place to the sunshine again,
+and his hopes were reborn.
+
+So the Yuletide of 1897 came and went; and the New Year broke, with
+Beardsley dreaming restless dreams of further conquests.
+
+In the early days of the New Year, the dying man’s hopes were raised by
+the sight of “a famous Egyptologist who looks like a corpse, has looked
+like one for fourteen years, who is much worse than I am, & yet lives
+on and does things. My spirits have gone up immensely since I have
+known him.”... But the middle of the month saw the cold north-east wind
+come down on Mentone, and it blew the flickering candle of Beardsley’s
+life to its guttering. After the 25th of January he never again left
+his room. February sealed his fate. He took to his bed, from which he
+arose but fitfully, yet at least he was granted the inestimable boon of
+being able to read. The Egyptologist also took to his bed--a bad omen
+for Beardsley. By the end of February the poor plagued fellow had lost
+heart--he felt the grave deepening and could not summon the will any
+further to clamber out of it.
+
+[Illustration: THE DEATH OF PIERROT
+
+“_As the dawn broke, Pierrot fell into his last sleep. Then upon
+tip-toe, silently up the stair, noiselessly into the room, came the
+comedians Arlecchino, Pantaleone, il Dottore, and Columbina, who with
+much love carried away upon their shoulders, the white frocked clown of
+Bergamo; whither, we know not._”]
+
+The sands in the hour-glass of Pierrot were running low. It was soon
+a fearful effort to use his beloved pen. Anxious to complete his
+designs and decorations for the _Volpone_, and remembering the pushing
+forward of the _Prospectus_ that he had urged on the publisher,
+he had fallen back on the pencil--as the elaborately drawn _Initial_
+letters show--for each of the scenes in _Volpone_, employing pencil
+with the consummate tact and beauty of craftsmanship that had marked
+his pen line and his aquatintesques in line and wash. Whatever dreams
+he had of full-paged illustrations in line and wash had now to be
+abandoned. Just as in his Great Period of _The Savoy_ he had come
+nearer to nature and had discovered the grass on the fields and flowers
+in the woods to be as decorative under the wide heavens as they were
+when cut in glasses “at Goodyears” in the Royal Arcade; just as he had
+found that fabrics, gossamer or silk or brocade, were as decorative as
+were flat black masses; just as he found intensely musical increase
+in the orchestration of his line as he admitted nature into his
+imagination; so now he came still nearer to nature with the pencil,
+and his Satyr as a terminal god illumined by the volume of atmosphere
+and lit by the haunting twilight, like his Greek column against the
+sky, took on quite as decorative a form as any flatness of black or
+white in his Japanesque or Greek Vase-painting phases. But as his
+skilled fingers designed the new utterance to his eager spirit, the
+fragile body failed him--at last the unresponsive pencil fell from his
+bloodless fingers--his work was done.
+
+As the young fellow lay a-dying on the 7th of March, nine days before
+he died he scribbled with failing fingers that last appeal from the
+Hotel Cosmopolitain at Mentone to his friend the publisher Leonard
+Smithers that he himself had put beyond that strange man’s power to
+fulfil--even had he had the will--for “the written word remains,” and,
+printed, is scattered to the four winds of heaven:
+
+ Jesus is our Lord & Judge
+
+ Dear Friend, I implore you to destroy all copies of Lysistrata & bad
+ drawings. Show this to Pollitt and conjure him to do same. By all that
+ is holy--all obscene drawings.
+
+  Aubrey Beardsley.
+  In my death agony.
+
+But this blotting out was now beyond any man’s doing. The bitter
+repentance of the dying Beardsley conforms but ill with the canting
+theories of such apologists as hold that Beardsley was a satirist
+lashing the vices of his age. Beardsley had no such delusions, made
+no such claims, was guiltless of any such self-righteousness. He
+faced the stern facts of his own committing; and almost with the last
+words he wrote he condemned the acts of his hands that had sullied a
+marvellous achievement--and he did so without stooping to any attempt
+at palliation or excuse. His dying eyes gazed unflinchingly at the
+truth--and the truth was very naked. The jackals who had egged him on
+to base ends and had sniggered at his obscenities, when his genius
+might have been soaring in the empyrean, could bring him scant comfort
+as he looked back upon the untidy patches of his wayfaring; nor were
+they the likely ones to fulfil his agonised last wishes--indeed, almost
+before his poor racked body was cold, they were about to exploit not
+only the things he desired to be undone, but they were raking together
+for their own profit the earlier crude designs that they knew full well
+Beardsley had striven his life long to keep from publication owing to
+their wretched mediocrity of craftsmanship.
+
+On the sixteenth day of the March of 1898, at twenty-five years and
+seven months, his mother and his sister by his side, the racked body
+was stilled, and the soul of Aubrey Beardsley passed into eternity.
+The agonised mother who had been his devoted companion and guardian
+throughout this long twelvemonth of flitting flight from death,
+together with his beloved sister Mabel Beardsley, were with him to the
+end. They were present at the Cathedral Mass; and “there was music.”
+So the body of Aubrey Beardsley was borne along the road that winds
+from the Cathedral to the burial place that “seemed like the way of the
+Cross--it was long and steep and we walked.” They laid him to rest in a
+grave on the edge of the hill hewn out of the rock, a sepulchre with an
+arched opening and a stone closing it, so that they who took their last
+walk beside him “thought of the sepulchre of The Lord.”
+
+Hail and Farewell!
+
+[Illustration: AVE ATQVE VALE]
+
+
+
+
+A KEY TO THE DATES OF WORKS BY AUBREY BEARDSLEY ACCORDING TO THE STYLE
+OF HIS SIGNATURE
+
+
+PUERILIA
+
+Mid-1888 he comes to town
+
+
+JUVENILIA
+
+Mid-1889 to Mid-1891, blank of achievement
+
+
+FORMATIVE PERIOD--BURNE-JONESESQUES
+
+Mid-1891 to Mid-1892
+
+During these three periods, up to Mid-1892, Beardsley signs with three
+initials A. V. B.
+
+
+MEDIÆVALISM AND THE HAIRY-LINE JAPANESQUES
+
+The _Morte d’Arthur_ and _Bon Mots_
+
+Mid-1892 to Mid-1893. Begins the “Japanesque mark”--the _stunted_ mark.
+
+In the Spring of 1893, with the coming of “The Studio,” and the ending
+of this period, Beardsley cuts the V out of his initials and out of
+his signature. He now signs A. B. or A. BEARDSLEY or AUBREY B. in
+ill-shaped “rustic” capitals, when he does not employ the “Japanesque
+mark,” even sometimes when he does employ it.
+
+
+“SALOME”
+
+Mid-1893 to the New Year 1894. The “Japanesque mark” becomes longer,
+more slender, and more graceful.
+
+
+“THE YELLOW BOOK” OR GREEK VASE PERIOD
+
+This ran from the New Year 1894 to Mid-1895; and in the middle of this
+_Yellow Book_ period, that is, in Mid-1894, he signs the “Japanesque
+mark” for the last time.
+
+
+THE GREAT PERIOD
+
+  I. “_The Savoy_” and II. “_The Aquatintesques_”
+  Mid-1895 to Yuletide 1896                1897
+
+From Mid-1895 Beardsley signs in plain block capitals, right up to
+the end--the only difference being that in the last phase of the
+_Aquatintesque line and wash_ work with the few line drawings of this
+time, that is from Mid-1896, he signs as a rule only the initials A. B.
+in plain block capitals, but now usually _in a corner of his design_,
+either in or without a small square label.
+
+
+
+
+  “AUBREY BEARDSLEY”
+  HAS BEEN DESIGNED
+  BY ROBERT S. JOSEPHY
+  AND PRINTED UNDER HIS
+  SUPERVISION BY THE
+  VAIL-BALLOU PRESS
+  BINGHAMTON
+  NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+  Transcriber's Notes:
+
+  Repetative heading for - The Key to dates...- has been removed.
+
+  Italics are shown thus: _sloping_.
+
+  Variations in spelling and hyphenation are retained.
+
+  Perceived typographical errors have been changed.
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75239 ***
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+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75239 ***</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="cover">
+</div>
+
+
+<h1>
+AUBREY BEARDSLEY</h1>
+
+<p class="c less sp">THE CLOWN, THE HARLEQUIN,</p>
+
+<p class="c less sp">THE PIERROT OF HIS AGE
+</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter1" id="f1">
+<img src="images/fig1.jpg" alt="aubrey">
+<p class="caption">PORTRAIT OF AUBREY BEARDSLEY</p>
+<p class="caption"><i>by F. H. Evans</i></p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<div class="bbox">
+<p class="c lsp big">
+AUBREY</p>
+
+<p class="c lsp big">
+BEARDSLEY</p>
+
+<p class="c sp">
+THE CLOWN, THE HARLEQUIN,</p>
+
+<p class="c sp">
+THE PIERROT OF HIS AGE</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter1">
+<img src="images/fig2.jpg" alt="decoration">
+</div>
+
+<p class="c sp p2 lsp xlarge">
+HALDANE MACFALL</p>
+
+<p class="c sp p6">
+NEW YORK</p>
+
+<p class="c sp large">
+SIMON AND SCHUSTER</p>
+
+<p class="c sp">
+MCMXXVII
+</p>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="c sp more lsp p2">
+COPYRIGHT, 1927, BY SIMON AND SCHUSTER, INC.</p>
+
+<p class="c sp med lsp p2">
+PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+</p>
+</div>
+<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="c sp large">
+TO</p>
+
+<p class="c sp large">
+EARL E. FISK</p>
+
+<p class="c sp less p1">
+THIS SMALL TRIBUTE</p>
+
+<p class="c sp less">
+TO A NOBLE COMPANIONSHIP</p>
+
+<p class="c sp p1 large">
+H. M.
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="narrow p6">“I have one aim—the grotesque. If I am
+not grotesque I am nothing.”</p>
+
+<p class="narrow">“I may claim to have some command of
+line. I try to get as much as possible out
+of a single curve or straight line.”</p>
+
+<p class="c sp more">[AUBREY BEARDSLEY.]</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="ph2">CONTENTS</p>
+</div>
+
+<table>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"></td>
+  <td class="tdl">FOREWORD</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#cf">17</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#c1">I:</a></td>
+  <td class="tdl">BIRTH AND FAMILY</td>
+  <td class="tdr">23</td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#c2">II:</a></td>
+  <td class="tdl">CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL</td>
+  <td class="tdr">27</td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"></td>
+  <td class="tdlp">“THE PUERILIA”</td>
+  <td class="tdr"></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#c3">III:</a></td>
+  <td class="tdl">YOUTH IN LONDON AS A CITY CLERK</td>
+  <td class="tdr">35</td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"></td>
+  <td class="tdlp">Mid-1888 to Mid-1891—Sixteen to Nineteen</td>
+  <td class="tdr"></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"></td>
+  <td class="tdlp">THE “JUVENILIA” AND THE “SCRAP BOOK”</td>
+  <td class="tdr"></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#c4">IV:</a></td>
+  <td class="tdl">FORMATIVE PERIOD OF DISCIPLESHIP</td>
+  <td class="tdr">42</td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"></td>
+  <td class="tdlp">Mid-1891 to Mid-1892—Nineteen to Twenty</td>
+  <td class="tdr"></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"></td>
+  <td class="tdlp">THE “BURNE-JONESESQUES”</td>
+  <td class="tdr"></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#c5">V:</a></td>
+  <td class="tdl">BEARDSLEY BECOMES AN ARTIST</td>
+  <td class="tdr">58</td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"></td>
+  <td class="tdlp">Mid-1892 to Mid-1893—Twenty to Twenty-one</td>
+  <td class="tdr"></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"></td>
+  <td class="tdlp">MEDIÆVALISM AND THE HAIRY-LINE JAPANESQUES</td>
+  <td class="tdr"></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"></td>
+  <td class="tdlp">“LE MORTE D’ARTHUR” AND “BON MOTS”</td>
+  <td class="tdr"></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#c6">VI:</a></td>
+  <td class="tdl">THE JAPANESQUES</td>
+  <td class="tdr">95</td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"></td>
+  <td class="tdlp">Mid-1893 to the New Year of 1894—Twenty-one</td>
+  <td class="tdr"></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"></td>
+  <td class="tdlp">“SALOME”</td>
+  <td class="tdr"></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#c7">VII:</a></td>
+  <td class="tdl">THE GREEK VASE PHASE</td>
+  <td class="tdr">113</td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"></td>
+  <td class="tdlp">New Year of 1894 to Mid-1895—Twenty-one to Twenty-three</td>
+  <td class="tdr"></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"></td>
+  <td class="tdlp">“THE YELLOW BOOK”</td>
+  <td class="tdr"></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#c8">VIII:</a></td>
+  <td class="tdl">THE GREAT PERIOD</td>
+  <td class="tdr">159</td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"></td>
+  <td class="tdlp">“THE SAVOY” AND THE AQUATINTESQUES</td>
+  <td class="tdr"></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"></td>
+  <td class="tdlp">Mid-1895 to Yuletide 1896—Twenty-three to Twenty-four</td>
+  <td class="tdr"></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"></td>
+  <td class="tdlp">I. “THE SAVOY”</td>
+  <td class="tdr"></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#c9">IX:</a></td>
+  <td class="tdl">THE GREAT PERIOD</td>
+  <td class="tdr">234</td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"></td>
+  <td class="tdlp">ESSAYS IN WASH AND LINE</td>
+  <td class="tdr"></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"></td>
+  <td class="tdlp">1897 to the End—Twenty-five</td>
+  <td class="tdr"></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"></td>
+  <td class="tdlp">II. THE AQUATINTESQUES</td>
+  <td class="tdr"></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#c10">X:</a></td>
+  <td class="tdl">THE END</td>
+  <td class="tdr">260</td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"></td>
+  <td class="tdlp">1898</td>
+  <td class="tdr"></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"></td>
+  <td class="tdl">A KEY TO THE DATES OF WORKS BY BEARDSLEY&#160; &#160;</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#c11">269</a></td></tr>
+
+</table>
+
+
+<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="ph2">ILLUSTRATIONS</p>
+</div>
+
+<table class="less">
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">PORTRAIT OF AUBREY BEARDSLEY <i>by F. H. Evans</i></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f1"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">SELF-PORTRAIT OF AUBREY BEARDSLEY</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f3">25</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">HOLYWELL STREET</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f4">33</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">HAIL MARY</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f5">60</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">PENCIL SKETCH OF A CHILD</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f6">67</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">HOW QUEEN GUENEVER MADE HER A NUN</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f7">71</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">“OF A NEOPHYTE....”</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f8">85</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">HEADPIECE FROM “LE MORTE D’ARTHUR”</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f10">92</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">THE PEACOCK SKIRT</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f11">94</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">THE STOMACH DANCE</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f12">103</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">TITLE-PAGE OF “SALOME”</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f13">108</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">COVER DESIGN FOR “THE YELLOW BOOK” VOLUME III</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f14">112</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">LA DAME AUX CAMÉLIAS</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f15">115</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">MESSALINA</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f16">121</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">PORTRAIT OF HIMSELF</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f17">125</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">NIGHT PIECE</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f18">129</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">PORTRAIT OF MRS. PATRICK CAMPBELL</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f19">136</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">THE MYSTERIOUS ROSE GARDEN</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f20">139</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">DESIGN FOR AN INVITATION CARD</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f21">143</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">THE SCARLET PASTORALE</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f22">149</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">ATALANTA</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f23">153</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">TITLE PAGE FROM “THE SAVOY” <i>NOS.</i> I <i>AND</i> II</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f24">158</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">FRONTISPIECE FOR “VENUS AND TANNHÄUSER”</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f25">161</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">THE MIRROR OF LOVE </td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f26">165</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">A CATALOGUE COVER</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f27">169</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">ON DIEPPE BEACH (THE BATHERS)</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f28">173</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">THE ABBÉ</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f29">175</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">THE FRUIT BEARERS</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f30">179</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">CHRISTMAS CARD</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f31">181</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">THE THREE MUSICIANS</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f32">185</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">TAILPIECE TO “THE THREE MUSICIANS”</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f33">186</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">COVER DESIGN FROM “THE SAVOY” <i>NO.</i> I</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f34">189</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">THE BILLET DOUX</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f35">191</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">THE TOILET</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f36">195</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">THE RAPE OF THE LOCK</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f37">197</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">THE BATTLE OF THE BEAUX AND THE BELLES</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f38">201</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">THE BARON’S PRAYER</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f39">203</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">THE COIFFING</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f40">207</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">COVER DESIGN FOR “THE SAVOY” <i>NO.</i> IV</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f41">209</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">COVER DESIGN FOR “THE SAVOY” <i>NO.</i> VII</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f42">213</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">FRONTISPIECE TO “PIERROT OF THE MINUTE”</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f43">215</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">HEADPIECE: PIERROT WITH THE HOUR-GLASS</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f44">219</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">TAILPIECE TO “PIERROT OF THE MINUTE”</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f45">220</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">A REPETITION OF “TRISTAN UND ISOLDE”</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f46">223</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">FRONTISPIECE TO “THE COMEDY OF THE RHINEGOLD”</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f47">225</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">ATALANTA—WITH THE HOUND</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f48">229</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">BEARDSLEY’S BOOK-PLATE</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f49">231</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">THE LADY WITH THE MONKEY</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f50">235</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">COVER DESIGN FOR “THE FORTY THIEVES”</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f51">241</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">ALI BABA IN THE WOOD</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f52">245</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">COVER DESIGN FOR “VOLPONE”</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f53">249</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">INITIAL FOR “VOLPONE”</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f54">255</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">THE DEATH OF PIERROT</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f55">261</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">AVE ATQUE VALE</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f56">270</a></td></tr>
+
+
+</table>
+
+<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="cf">FOREWORD</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap large">About</span> the mid-July of 1894, a bust of Keats had been unveiled in
+Hampstead Church—the gift of the American admirers of the dead
+poet, who had been born to a livery-stable keeper at the Swan and
+Hoop on the Pavement at Finsbury a hundred years gone by—and
+there had forgathered within the church on the hill for the occasion
+the literary and artistic world of the ’Nineties. As the congregation
+came pouring out of the church doors, a slender gaunt young man
+broke away from the throng, and, hurrying across the graveyard,
+stumbled and lurched awkwardly over the green mounds of the sleeping
+dead. This stooping, dandified being was evidently intent on taking
+a short-cut out of God’s acre. There was something strangely
+fantastic in the ungainly efforts at a dignified wayfaring over the
+mound-encumbered ground by the loose-limbed lank figure so immaculately
+dressed in black cut-away coat and silk hat, who carried
+his lemon-yellow kid gloves in his long white hands, his lean wrists
+showing naked beyond his cuffs, his pallid cadaverous face grimly set
+on avoiding falling over the embarrassing mounds that tripped his
+feet. He took off his hat to some lady who called to him, showing his
+“tortoise-shell” coloured hair, smoothed down and plastered over his
+forehead in a “quiff” almost to his eyes—then he stumbled on again.
+He stooped and stumbled so much and so awkwardly amongst the
+sleeping dead that I judged him short-sighted; but was mistaken—he
+was fighting for breath. It was Aubrey Beardsley.</p>
+
+<p><i>The Yellow Book</i> had come upon the town three months gone by.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</span>
+Beardsley, little more than twenty-one, had leaped into fame in a night.
+He was the talk of the town—was seen everywhere—was at the topmost
+height of a prodigious and feverish vogue. Before a year was out
+he was to be expelled from <i>The Yellow Book</i>! As he had come up, so
+he was to come down—like a rocket. For, there was about to fall out of
+the blue the scandal that wrecked and destroyed Oscar Wilde; and for
+some fantastic, unjust reason, it was to lash at this early-doomed
+young dandy—fling him from <i>The Yellow Book</i>—and dim for him the
+splendour in which he was basking with such undisguised delight.
+Within a twelvemonth his sun was to have spluttered out; and he was
+to drop out of the public eye almost as though he had never been.</p>
+
+<p>But, though we none of us knew it nor guessed it who were gathered
+there—and the whole literary and artistic world was gathered there—this
+young fellow at twenty-three was to create within a year or so the
+masterpieces of his great period—the drawings for a new venture to
+be called <i>The Savoy</i>—and was soon to begin work on the superb
+designs for <i>The Rape of the Lock</i>, which were to thrust him at a stroke
+into the foremost achievement of his age. Before four years were run
+out, Beardsley was to be several months in his grave.</p>
+
+<p>As young Beardsley that day stumbled amongst the mounds of the
+dead, so was his life’s journey thenceforth to be—one long struggle
+to crawl out of the graveyard and away from the open grave that
+yawned for him by day and by night. He was to feel himself being
+dragged back to it again and again by unseen hands—was to spend his
+strength in the frantic struggle to escape—he was to get almost out of
+sight of the green mounds of the dead for a sunny day or two only to
+find himself drawn back by the clammy hand of the Reaper to the edge
+of the open grave again. Death played with the terrified man as a cat<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</span>
+plays with a mouse—with cruel forbearance let him clamber out of
+the grave, out of the graveyard, even out into the sunshine of the high
+road, only maliciously to pluck him back again in a night. And we,
+who are spellbound by the superb creations of his imagination that
+were about to be poured forth throughout two or three years of this
+agony, ought to realise that Beardsley wrought these blithe and lyrical
+things between the terrors of a constant fight for life, for the very
+breath of his body, with the gaunt lord of death. We ought to realise
+that even as Beardsley by light of his candles, created his art, the
+skeleton leered like an evil ghoul out of the shadows of his room. For,
+realising that, one turns with added amazement to the gaiety and
+charm of <i>The Rape of the Lock</i>. Surely the hideous nightmares that
+now and again issued from his plagued brain are far less a subject for
+bewilderment than the gaiety and blithe wit that tripped from his
+facile pen!</p>
+
+<p>Beardsley knew he was a doomed man even on the threshold of
+manhood, and he strove with feverish intensity to get a lifetime into
+each twelvemonth. He knew that for him there would be few tomorrows—he
+knew that he had but a little while to which to look
+forward, and had best live his life to-day. And he lived it like one
+possessed.</p>
+
+<p class="r"><span class="smcap large">Haldane Macfall.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</span></span></p>
+<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="c sp">
+<span class="xlarge lsp">AUBREY BEARDSLEY</span><br>
+<br>
+<span class="less">THE CLOWN, THE HARLEQUIN,<br>
+THE PIERROT OF HIS AGE</span><br>
+<br>
+1872-1898<br>
+</p>
+</div>
+<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="c1">I</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="c large sp">BIRTH AND FAMILY</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap large">To</span> a somewhat shadowy figure of a man, said to be “something
+in the city,” of the name of Beardsley—one Vincent Paul Beardsley—and
+to his wife, Ellen Agnes, the daughter of an army surgeon of
+the family of the historic name of Pitt, there was born on the twenty-first
+day of the August of 1872 in their home at the house of the
+army surgeon at Buckingham Road in Brighton their second child,
+a boy, whom they christened Aubrey Vincent Beardsley, little foreseeing
+that in a short hectic twenty-five years the lad would lie
+a-dying, having made the picturesque name of Beardsley world-famous.</p>
+
+<p>Whether the father were a victim to the hideous taint of consumption
+that was to be the cruel dowry transmitted to the gifted boy, does
+not appear in the gossip of the time. Indeed, the father flits illusive,
+stealthy as a phantom in Victorian carpet-slippers, through the chronicles
+and gossip of the boy’s childhood, and as ghostlike fades away,
+departing unobtrusive, vaporous, into the shades of oblivion, his work
+of fathering done, leaving behind him little impression unless it be that
+so slight a footprint as he made upon the sands of time sets us wondering
+by what freak or perhaps irony of circumstance he was called to
+the begetting of the fragile little fellow who was to bear his name and
+raise it from out the fellowship of the great unknown so that it should
+stand to all time written across the foremost achievement of the age.
+For, when all’s said, it was a significance—if his only significance—to
+have fathered the wonderful boy who, as he lay dying at twenty-five,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</span>
+had imprinted this name of Beardsley on the recording tablets of the
+genius of his race in the indelible ink of high fulfilment. However, in
+the reflected radiance of his son, he flits a brief moment into the limelight
+and is gone, whether “something in the city” or whatnot, does
+not now matter—his destiny was in fatherhood. But at least it was
+granted to him by Fortune, so niggardly of gifts to him, that, from
+whatever modest window to which he withdrew himself, he should live
+to see the full splendour of his strange, fantastic son, who, as at the
+touch of a magician’s wand, was to make the pen’s line into very
+music—the Clown and Harlequin and Pierrot of his age....</p>
+
+<p>As so often happens in the nursery of genius, it was the bright
+personality of the mother that watched over, guided, and with unceasing
+vigilance and forethought, moulded the child’s mind and
+character—therefore the man’s—in so far as the moulding of mind
+and character be beyond the knees of the gods—a mother whose affection
+and devotion were passionately returned by the lad and his beautiful
+sister, also destined to become well-known in the artistic world
+of London as Mabel Beardsley, the actress. From his mother the boy
+inherited a taste for art; she herself had painted in water colours as a
+girl.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f3">
+<img src="images/fig3.jpg" alt="aubrey">
+<p class="caption">SELF-PORTRAIT OF AUBREY BEARDSLEY</p>
+<p class="caption">(<i>Being The “Footnote” from The Savoy</i>)</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="c2">II</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="c large sp">CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL</p>
+
+<p class="c less sp p1">THE “PUERILIA”</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap large">Of</span> a truth, it was a strange little household in Buckingham Road,
+Brighton. In what to the world appeared an ordinary middle-class
+home, the small boy and girl were brought up by the gently bred
+and cultured mother in an intellectual hot-house that inevitably became
+a forcing-house to any intelligent child—and both children were
+uncannily intelligent. The little girl Mabel Beardsley was two or
+three years older than the boy Aubrey, fortunately for the lad as
+things turned out. The atmosphere of the little home was not precisely
+a healthy atmosphere for any child, least of all for a fragile wayward
+spirit.</p>
+
+<p>It is difficult to imagine the precocious sprite Aubrey poring over
+the exquisitely healthy and happy nursery rhymes of Randolph Caldecott
+which began to appear about the sixth or seventh year of Aubrey’s
+life—yet in his realm Randolph Caldecott is one of the greatest illustrators
+that England has brought forth. You may take it as a sure test
+of a sense of artistry and taste in the parents whether their children are
+given the art of Randolph Caldecott in the nursery or the somewhat
+empty artiness of Kate Greenaway. The Beardsleys were given Kate
+Greenaway, and the small Aubrey thus lost invaluable early lessons
+in drawing and in “seeing” character in line and form, and in the
+wholesome joy of country sights and sounds.</p>
+
+<p>A quiet and reserved child, the small Aubrey was early employing
+his pencil, and revealed an almost uncanny flair for music.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</span></p>
+
+<p>Sent to a Kindergarten, the child did not take kindly to forced lessons,
+but showed eager delight in anything to do with music or drawing
+or decoration.</p>
+
+<p>The little fellow was but seven years old when, in 1879, his mother’s
+heart was anguished by the first terror of the threat of that fell disease
+which was to dog his short career and bring him down. He was sent to
+a preparatory school at Hurstpierpoint for a couple of years. Here the
+child seems to have made his chief impression on his little comrades
+and teachers by establishing his personal courage and an extreme reserve—which
+sounds as if the boy found himself in troubled waters.
+However the ugly symptoms of delicacy now showed marked threat of
+consumption; and a change had to be made.</p>
+
+<p>At nine years of age, in 1881, the child was taken to Epsom for a
+couple of years, when his family made a move that was to have a profound
+influence over his future.</p>
+
+<p>In the March of 1883, in his eleventh year, the Beardsleys settled
+in London. Aubrey with his sister Mabel, was even at this early age so
+skilled in music that he had made his appearance in public as an infant
+prodigy—the two children playing at concerts. Indeed, the boy’s
+knowledge of music was so profound that there was more than whimsy
+in the phrase so often upon his lips in the after-years when, apologising
+for speaking with authority on music, he excused himself on the
+plea that it was the only subject of which he knew anything. His feeling
+for sound was to create the supreme quality of his line when, in the
+years to come, he was to give forth line that “sings” like the notes of a
+violin. But whether the child’s drawings for menus and invitation-cards
+in coloured chalks were due to his study of Kate Greenaway or<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</span>
+not, the little fellow was certainly fortunate in getting “quite considerable
+sums” for them; for, of a truth, they must have been fearsome
+things. As we shall see, Aubrey Beardsley’s early work was wretched
+and unpromising stuff.</p>
+
+<p>A year of the unnatural life the boy was leading in London made it
+absolutely necessary in the August of 1884, at his twelfth birthday, to
+send the two children back to Brighton to live with an old aunt, where
+the small boy and girl were now driven back upon themselves by the
+very loneliness of their living. Aubrey steeped himself in history,
+eagerly reading Freeman and Green.</p>
+
+<p>In the November he began to attend the Brighton Grammar School;
+and in the January of 1885 he became a boarder.</p>
+
+<p>Here fortune favored Aubrey; and he was to know three and a half
+years at the school, very happy years. His house-master, Mr. King,
+greatly liked the youngster, and encouraged him in his tastes by
+letting him have the run of a sitting room and library; so that Aubrey
+Beardsley was happy as the day was long. His “quaint personality”
+soon made its mark. In the June of 1885, near his thirteenth birthday,
+he wrote a little poem, “The Valiant,” in the school magazine. The
+delicate boy, as might be expected, found all athletic sports distasteful
+and a strain upon his fragile body, and he was generally to
+be found with a book when the others were at play. His early love for
+Carlyle’s “French Revolution,” the poets, and the Tudor and Restoration
+dramatists, was remarkable in a schoolboy. He read
+“Erewhon” and “enjoyed it immensely,” though it had been lent to
+him with grave doubts as to whether it were not too deep for him. His
+unflagging industry became a byword. He caricatured the masters;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</span>
+acted in school plays—appearing even before large audiences at the
+Pavilion—and was the guiding spirit in the weekly performances at
+the school got up by Mr. King and for which he designed programmes.
+His headmaster, Mr. Marshall, showed a kindly attitude towards the
+lad; but it was Mr. Payne who actively encouraged his artistic leanings,
+as Mr. King his theatrical.</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately, in the radiance of his after-rise to fame, these
+“puerilia” have been eagerly acclaimed by writers on his art as revelations
+of his budding genius; but as a painful matter of plain unvarnished
+truth, they were wretched trashy efforts that ought to have
+been allowed to be blotted from his record and his reputation. Probably
+his performances as an actor were as nerve-racking a business as
+the grown-ups are compelled to suffer at school speech-days. Beardsley
+himself showed truer judgment than his fond admirers in that, on
+reaching to years of discretion, he ever desired, and sought every
+means in his power, to obliterate his immature efforts by exchanging
+good work for them and then destroying them. Indeed, the altogether
+incredible fact about all of Beardsley’s early work is that it was such
+unutterable trash.</p>
+
+<p>Of the influences that were going to the making of Aubrey’s mind
+at school, it is well to note that the youngster bought each volume of
+the “Mermaid” issue of the Elizabethan dramatists as it came out, giving
+amateur performances of the plays with his sister in his holidays.
+By the time he was to leave Brighton Grammar School at sixteen, he
+had a very thorough grip on Elizabethan literature. It is, some of it,
+very strong meat even for sixteen; but Aubrey had been fed on strong
+meat almost from infancy. Early mastering the French tongue, the lad
+was soon steeped in the French novel and classics. From the French he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</span>
+worked back to Latin, of which he is said to have been a facile reader—but
+such Latin as he had was probably much of a piece with the
+dog-Latin of a public school classical education.</p>
+
+<p>Now we know from his school-friend, Mr. Charles Cochran, that
+Aubrey Beardsley drew the designs for the “Pied Piper” before he
+left the school in mid-1888—though the play was not performed until
+Christmastide at the Dome in Brighton on Wednesday December
+the 19th 1888. Cochran also bears witness to the fact that the pen
+and wash drawing of <i>Holywell Street</i> was made in mid-1888 before
+he left the school. He describes his friend Beardsley with “his red
+hair—worn <i>á la Bretonne</i>,” which I take it means “bobbed,” as the
+modern girl now calls it. Beardsley is “indifferent” in school-work,
+but writes verse and is very musical. His “stage-struck mood” we have
+seen encouraged by his house-master, Mr. King.</p>
+
+<p>C. B. Cochran and Beardsley went much to “matinees” at
+Brighton; and at one of these is played “<i>L’Enfant Prodigue</i>” without
+words—it was to make an ineffaceable impression on young Beardsley.</p>
+
+<p>There is no question that <i>L’Enfant Prodigue</i> and the rococo of
+Bright Pavilion coloured the vision and shaped the genius of Beardsley;
+and he never let them go. He was to flirt with faked mediævalism;
+he was to flirt awhile with Japan; but he ever came back to
+Pierrot and the bastard rococo of Brighton Pavilion.</p>
+
+<p>Beardsley was now becoming very particular about his dress,
+though how exactly he fitted the red hair “<i>a la Bretonne</i>” to his theory
+of severe good taste in dress that should not call attention to the
+wearer, would require more than a little guesswork.</p>
+
+<p>The Midsummer of 1888 came to Brighton Grammar School as it
+came to the rest of the world, and Aubrey Beardsley’s schooldays were<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</span>
+numbered. At his old school the lank angular youth had become a
+marked personality. Several of his schoolfellows were immensely
+proud of him. But the uprooting was at hand; and the July of 1888,
+on the eve of his sixteenth birthday, saw the young fellow bidding
+farewell and leaving for London, straightway to become a clerk in an
+architect’s office.</p>
+
+<p>At Brighton Grammar School, Beardsley left behind him all his
+“puerilia”—or what the writers generally call his “juvenilia,” but
+these were not as yet. It is almost incredible that the same hesitant,
+inarticulate, childish hand that drew the feeble puerilities of the “Pied
+Piper” could at the same time have been making the wash drawing
+of <i>Holywell Street</i>. It may be that Mr. Cochran’s memory plays him
+a month or two false—it is difficult to see why Beardsley should
+have made a drawing at a school in Brighton of a street in London
+that he had not yet learnt to frequent—but even granting that the
+<i>Holywell Street</i> was rough-sketched in London and sent by Beardsley
+to his schoolfellow a month or two later, in the <i>Holywell Street</i>
+(1888) there is a significance. At sixteen, in mid-1888, Beardsley
+leaves his school and his “puerilia” cease—he enters at once on a
+groping attempt to find a craftsmanship whereby to express his
+ideas and impressions. So far, of promise there has been not a tittle—one
+searches the “puerilia” for the slightest glimmer of a sign—but
+there is none.</p>
+
+<p>In the <i>Holywell Street</i> there <i>is</i> the sign—and a portent.</p>
+
+<p>It is Beardsley’s first milestone on his strange, fantastic, tragi-comic
+wayfaring.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f4">
+<img src="images/fig4.jpg" alt="holywell">
+<p class="caption">HOLYWELL STREET</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="c3">III</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="c large sp">YOUTH IN LONDON AS A CITY CLERK</p>
+
+<p class="c">Mid-1888 to Mid-1891—Sixteen to Nineteen</p>
+
+<p class="c less sp p1">THE “JUVENILIA” AND THE “SCRAP BOOK”</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap large">At</span> sixteen, in the August of 1888, Aubrey Beardsley, a lank tall
+dandified youth, loose-limbed, angular, and greatly stooping, went to
+live with his father and mother in London in their home at 59 Charlwood
+Street, Pimlico, in order to go into business in the city as clerk
+in the office of an architect at Clerkenwell, awaiting a vacancy in an
+Insurance office.</p>
+
+<p>The lad came up to London, though intensely self-conscious and
+shy and sensitive to social rebuff, a bright, quick-witted, intelligent
+young fellow, lionised by his school, to find himself a somewhat solitary
+figure in the vast chill of this mighty city. In his first little Pimlico
+home in London, he had the affectionate and keenly appreciative,
+sympathetic, and hero-worshipping companionship of his devoted
+mother and sister. In this home Aubrey with his mother and sister
+was in an atmosphere that made the world outside quite unimportant,
+an atmosphere to which the youngster came eagerly at the end of his
+day’s drudgery in the city, and—with the loud bang of the hall-door—shut
+out that city for the rest of the evening. Brother and
+sister were happy in their own life.</p>
+
+<p>But it is that <i>Holywell Street</i> drawing which unlocks the door. It
+is almost as vital as this home in Pimlico. In those days the dingy old
+ramshackle street better known as Book-Seller’s Row—that made
+an untidy backwater to the Strand between the churches of St. Mary<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</span>
+le Strand and St. Clement Danes, now swept and garnished as Aldwych—was
+the haunt of all who loved old books. You trod on the
+toes of Prime Ministers or literary gods or intellectual riff-raff with
+equal absence of mind. But Holywell Street, with all its vicissitudes,
+its fantastic jumble of naughtinesses and unsavoury prosecutions—and
+its devotion to books—was nearing its theatric end. In many
+ways Holywell Street was a symbol of Beardsley. The young fellow
+spent every moment he could snatch from his city office in such fascinating
+haunts as these second-hand bookshops.</p>
+
+<p>We know that, on coming to London, Beardsley wrote a farce, “A
+Brown Study,” which was played at the Royal Pavilion at Brighton;
+and that before he was seventeen he had written the first act of a three-act
+comedy and a monologue called “A Race for Wealth.”</p>
+
+<p>A free afternoon would take him to the British Museum or the
+National Gallery to browse amongst antique art.</p>
+
+<p>His time for creative work could have been but scant, and his delicate
+health probably compelled a certain amount of caution on his
+behalf from his anxious sister and mother. But at nine every evening
+he really began to live; and he formed the habit of working at night
+by consequence. We may take it that Beardsley’s first year in London
+was filled with eager pursuit of literature and art rather than with
+any sustained creative effort. And he would make endless sacrifices
+to hear good music, which all cut into his time. Nor had he yet even
+dreamed of pursuing an artistic career.</p>
+
+<p>The family were fortunate in the friendship of the Reverend Alfred
+Gurney who had known them at Brighton, and had greatly encouraged
+Beardsley’s artistic leanings.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</span>
+Beardsley had only been a year in London when he retired from
+the architect’s office and became a clerk in the Guardian Insurance
+Office, about his seventeenth birthday—August 1889. Whether this
+change bettered his prospects, or whatsoever was the motive, it was
+unfortunately to be the beginning of two years of appalling misery
+and suffering, in body and soul, for the youth. His eighteenth and
+nineteenth years were the black years of Aubrey Beardsley—and as
+blank of achievement as they were black.</p>
+
+<p>From mid-1889 to mid-1891 we have two years of emptiness in
+Beardsley’s career. Scarcely had he taken his seat at his desk in the
+Guardian Insurance Office when, in the Autumn of 1889, he was assailed
+by a violent attack of bleeding from the lungs. The lad’s theatres
+and operas and artistic life had to be wholly abandoned; and
+what strength remained to him he concentrated on keeping his clerkly
+position at the Insurance Office in the city.</p>
+
+<p>The deadly hemorrhages which pointed to his doom came near to
+breaking down his wonderful spirit. The gloom that fell upon his
+racked body compelled him to cease from drawing, and robbed him
+of the solace of the opera. It was without relief. The detestation of a
+business life which galled his free-roving spirit, but had to be endured
+that he might help to keep the home for his family, came near to sinking
+him in the deeps of despair at a moment when his bodily strength
+and energy were broken by the appalling exhaustion of the pitiless
+disease which mercilessly stalked at his side by day and by night. He
+forsook all hope of an artistic life in drawing or literature. How the
+plagued youth endured is perhaps best now not dwelt upon—it was
+enough to have broken the courage of the strongest man.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</span>
+Beardsley’s first three years in London, then, were empty unfruitful
+years. From sixteen to nineteen he was but playing with art as a mere
+recreation from his labours in the city as his fellow-clerks played
+games or chased hobbies. What interest he may have had in art, and
+that in but an amateurish fashion, during his first year in London, was
+completely blotted out by these two blank years of exhausting bodily
+suffering that followed, years in which his eyes gazed in terror at
+death.</p>
+
+<p>His first year had seen him reading much amongst his favourite
+eighteenth century French writers, and such modern books as appealed
+to his morbid inquisition into sex. The contemplation of his
+disease led the young fellow to medical books, and it was now that the
+diagrams led him to that repulsive interest in the unborn embryo—especially
+the human fetus—with which he repeatedly and wilfully
+disfigured his art on occasion. He harped and harped upon it like a
+dirty-minded schoolboy.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after the young Beardsley had become a clerk in the Guardian
+Insurance Office he found his way to the fascinating mart of Jones
+and Evans’s well-known bookshop in Queen Street, Cheapside,
+whither he early drifted at the luncheon hour, to pore over its treasures—to
+Beardsley the supreme treasure.</p>
+
+<p>It was indeed Beardsley’s lucky star that drew him into that
+Cheapside bookshop, where, at first shyly, he began to be an occasional
+visitor, but in a twelvemonth, favoured by circumstance, he became
+an almost daily frequenter.</p>
+
+<p>The famous bookshop near the Guildhall in Queen Street, Cheapside,
+which every city man of literary and artistic taste knows so well—indeed
+the bookshop of Jones and Evans has been waggishly called<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</span>
+the University of the city clerk, and the jest masks a truth—was but
+a minute’s walk for Beardsley within a twelvemonth of his coming to
+London town; and the youth was fortunate in winning the notice of
+one of the firm who presided over the place, Mr. Frederick Evans.
+Here Beardsley would turn in after his city work was done, as well as
+at the luncheon hour, to discuss the new books; and thereby won
+into the friendship of Frederick Evans who was early interested in
+him. They also had a passionate love of music in common. It was to
+Frederick Evans and his hobby of photography that later we were to
+owe two of the finest and most remarkable portraits of Beardsley at
+the height of his achievement and his vogue.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it came about that Beardsley made his first literary friendship
+in the great city. He would take a few drawings he made at this time
+and discuss them with Frederick Evans. Soon they were on so friendly
+a footing that Evans would “swap” the books for which the youth
+craved in exchange for drawings. This kindly encouragement of
+Beardsley did more for his development at this time than it is well
+possible to calculate. At the Guardian Insurance Office there sat next
+to Beardsley a young clerk called Pargeter with whom Beardsley
+made many visits to picture galleries and the British Museum, and
+both youngsters haunted the bookshop in Cheapside.</p>
+
+<p>“We know by the <i>Scrap Book</i>, signed by him on the 6th of May
+1890, what in Beardsley’s own estimate was his best work up to that
+time, and the sort of literature and art that interested him. None of
+this work has much promise; it shows no increasing command of the
+pictorial idea—only an increasing sense of selection—that is all. His
+“juvenilia” were as mediocre as his “puerilia” were wretched; but
+there begins to appear a certain personal vision.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</span></p>
+
+<p>From the very beginning Beardsley lived in books—saw life only
+through books—was aloof from his own age and his own world, which
+he did not understand nor care to understand; nay, thought it rather
+vulgar to understand. When he shook off the dust of the city from his
+daily toil, he lived intellectually and emotionally in a bookish atmosphere
+with Madame Bovary, Beatrice Cenci, Manon Lescaut, Mademoiselle
+de Maupin, Phèdre, Daudet’s Sappho and La Dame aux
+Camélias, as his intimates. He sketched them as yet with but an amateur
+scribbling. But he dressed for the part of a dandy in his narrow
+home circle, affecting all the airs of superiority of the day—contempt
+for the middle-class—contempt of Mrs. Grundy—elaborately cultivating
+a flippant wit—a caustic tongue. He had the taint of what Tree
+used to whip with contempt as “refainement”—he affected a voice
+and employed picturesque words in conversation. He pined for the
+day when he might mix with the great ones as he conceived the great
+ones to be; and he sought to acquire their atmosphere as he conceived
+it. Beardsley was always theatrical. He noticed from afar that people
+of quality, though they dressed well, avoided ostentation or eccentricity—dressed
+“just so.” He set himself that ideal. He tried to catch
+their manner. The result was that he gave the impression of intense
+artificiality. And just as he was starting for the race, this black
+hideous suffering had fallen upon him and made him despair. In
+1890 had appeared Whistler’s <i>Gentle Art of Making Enemies</i>—Beardsley
+steeped himself in the venomous wit and set himself to
+form a style upon it, much as did the other young bloods of artistic
+ambition.</p>
+
+<p>As suddenly as the blackness of his two blank years of obliteration
+had fallen upon him a year after he came to town, so as he reached<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</span>
+mid-1891, his nineteenth birthday, the hideous threat lifted from
+him, his courage returned with health—and his belief in himself. So
+far he had treated art as an amateur seeking recreation; he now decided
+to make an effort to become an artist.</p>
+
+<p>The sun shone for him.</p>
+
+<p>He determined to get a good opinion on his prospects. He secured
+an introduction to Burne-Jones.</p>
+<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="c4">IV</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="c large sp">FORMATIVE PERIOD OF DISCIPLESHIP</p>
+
+<p class="c">Mid-1891 to Mid-1892—Nineteen to Twenty</p>
+
+<p class="c less sp p1">THE “BURNE-JONESESQUES”</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap large">On</span> a Sunday, the 12th of July 1891, near the eve of his nineteenth
+birthday, Beardsley called on Burne-Jones.</p>
+
+<p>Beardsley being still a clerk in the city—his week-ends given to
+drudgery at the Insurance Office—he had to seize occasion by the
+forelock—therefore Sunday.</p>
+
+<p>The gaunt youth went to Burne-Jones with the light of a new life
+in his eyes; he had shaken off the bitter melancholy which had blackened
+his past two years and had kept his eyes incessantly on the grave;
+and, turning his back on the two years blank of fulfilment or artistic
+endeavour, he entered the gates of Burne-Jones’s house in the long
+North End Road in West Kensington with new hopes built upon the
+promise of renewed health.</p>
+
+<p>We can guess roughly what was in the portfolio that he took to
+show Burne-Jones—we have seen what he had gathered together in
+the <i>Scrap Book</i> as his best work up to mid-1890, and he had done
+little to add to it by mid-1891. We know the poverty of his artistic
+skill from the wretched pen-and-ink portrait he made of himself at
+this time—a sorry thing which he strained every resource to recover
+from Robert Ross who maliciously hid it from him and eventually
+gave it to the British Museum—an act which, had Beardsley<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</span>
+known the betrayal that was to be, would have made him turn in his
+grave. But that was not as yet. We know from a fellow-clerk in the
+city that Beardsley had made an occasional drawing in wash, or toned
+in pencil, like the remarkably promising <i>Molière</i>, which it is difficult
+to believe as having been made previous to the visit to Burne-Jones,
+were it not that it holds no hint of Burne-Jones’s influence which was
+now to dominate Beardsley’s style for a while.</p>
+
+<p>Burne-Jones took a great liking to the youth, was charmed with
+his quick intelligence and enthusiasm, tickled by his ironies, and took
+him to his heart. When Beardsley left the hospitable man he left in
+high spirits, and an ardent disciple. Burne-Jonesesques were henceforth
+to pour forth from his hands for a couple of years.</p>
+
+<p>Beardsley’s call on Watts was not so happy—the solemnities
+reigned, and the great man shrewdly suspected that Beardsley was
+not concerned with serious fresco—’tis even whispered that he suspected
+naughtiness.</p>
+
+<p>As the young Beardsley had seen the gates of Burne-Jones’s house
+opening to him he had hoped that he was stepping into the great world
+of which he had dreamed in the city. The effect of this visit to Burne-Jones
+was upheaving. Beardsley plunged into the Æsthetic conventions
+of the mediæval academism of Burne-Jones to which his whole
+previous taste and his innate gifts were utterly alien. At once he became
+intrigued over pattern and decoration for which he had so far
+shown not a shred of feeling. For the Reverend Alfred Gurney, the
+old Brighton friend of the family, the young fellow designed Christmas
+cards which are thin if whole-hearted mimicry of Burne-Jones, as
+indeed was most of the work on which he launched with enthusiasm,
+now that he had Burne-Jones’s confidence in his artistic promise<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</span>
+whereon to found his hopes. Not only was he turned aside from his
+18th century loves to an interest in the Arthurian legends which had
+become the keynote of the Æsthetic Movement under Morris and
+Burne-Jones, but his drawings reveal that the kindred atmosphere of
+the great Teutonic sagas, Tristan and Tannhäuser and the Gotterdammerung
+saw him back at his beloved operas and music again.
+Frederick Evans, who was as much a music enthusiast as literary
+and artistic in taste, saw much of the young fellow in his shop in
+Cheapside this year. He was striving hard to master the craftsmanship
+of artistic utterance.</p>
+
+<p>Another popular tune that caught the young Beardsley’s ears was
+the Japanese vogue set agog by Whistler out of France. Japan conquered
+London as she had conquered France—if rather a pallid ghost
+of Japan. The London house became an abomination of desolation,
+“faked” with Japanese cheap art and imitation Japanese furniture.
+There is nothing more alien to an English room than Eastern decorations,
+no matter how beautiful in themselves. But the vogue-mongers
+sent out the word and it was so.</p>
+
+<p>It happened that the Japanese craze that was on the town intrigued
+Beardsley sufficiently to make him take considerable note of the use of
+pure line by the Japs—he saw prints in shops and they interested
+him, but he had scant knowledge of Japanese art; the balance, spacing,
+and use of line, were a revelation to him, and he tried to make a
+sort of bastard art by replacing the Japanese atmosphere and types
+with English types and atmosphere. There was a delightful disregard
+of perspective and of atmospheric values in relating figures to scenery
+which appealed to the young fellow, and he was soon experimenting
+in the grotesque effects which the Japanese convention allowed to him.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</span></p>
+
+<p>Said to be of this year of 1891 is an illustrated “Letter to G. F.
+Scotson-Clark Esq.,” his musician friend, “written after visiting
+Whistler’s Peacock Room.” This much-vaunted room probably owes
+most of its notoriety to the fiercely witty quarrel that Whistler waged
+with his patron Leyland, the ship-owner. It is not clear that the form
+and furniture of this pseudo-Japanese room owed anything whatsoever
+to Whistler; it would seem that his part in its decoration was
+confined to smothering an already existing hideosity in blue paint and
+gold leaf. It was a room in which slender spindles or narrow square
+upright shafts of wood, fixed a few inches from the walls, left the chief
+impression of the Japanesque, suggestive of the exquisite little cages
+the Japs make for grasshoppers and fireflies; and to this extent
+Whistler may have approved the abomination, for we have his disciple
+Menpes’s word for it that Whistler’s law for furniture was that it
+“should be as simple as possible and be of straight lines.” Whistler
+and Wilde’s war against the bric-a-brac huddle and hideousness of
+the crowded Victorian drawing-room brought in a barren bare type
+of room to usurp it which touched bottom in a designed emptiness, in
+preciousness, in dreariness, and in discomfort. Whatsoever Whistler’s
+blue and gold-leaf scheme, carried out all over this pretentious room,
+may have done to better its state, at least it must have rid it of the
+brown melancholy of the stamped Spanish leather which Whistler
+found so “stunning to paint upon.” It is probable that this contraption
+of pseudo-Japanese art, to which the rare genius of Whistler was
+degraded, did impress the youthful Beardsley in this his imitative
+stage of development, owing to its wide publicity. The hideous slender
+straight wooden uprights of the furnishments of which the whole
+thing largely consisted, were indeed to be adopted by Beardsley as<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</span>
+the basis of his drawings of furniture a year or two afterwards, as we
+shall see. But in some atonement, the superb peacock shutters by
+Whistler also left their influence on the sensitive brain of the younger
+man—those peacocks that were to bring forth a marked advance in
+Beardsley’s decorative handling a couple of years later when he was
+to give his <i>Salome</i> to the world.</p>
+
+<p>It is not uninteresting to note that, out of this letter, flits for a
+fleeting moment the shadowy figure of the father—as quickly to vanish
+again. At least the father is still alive; for the young fellow calls
+for his friend’s companionship as his mother and sister are at Woking
+and he and his “pater” alone in the house.</p>
+
+<p>Beardsley’s old Brighton Senior House-Master, Mr. King, had become
+secretary to the Blackburn Technical Institute, for which he
+edited a little magazine called <i>The Bee</i>; and it was in the November
+of 1891 that Beardsley drew for it as frontispiece his <i>Hamlet</i> in which
+he at once reveals the Burne-Jonesesque discipleship.</p>
+
+<p>It is well to keep in mind that the winter of 1891 closed down on
+Aubrey Beardsley in a middle-class home in Pimlico, knowing no one
+of note or consequence except Burne-Jones. His hand’s skill was halting
+and his craftsmanship hesitant and but taking root in a feeling
+for line and design; but the advance is so marked that he was clearly
+working hard at self-development. It was as the year ran out, some
+six months after the summer that had brought hope and life to
+Beardsley out of the grave that, at the Christmastide of 1891, Aymer
+Vallance, one of the best-known members of the Morris group, went
+to call on the lonely youngster after disregarding for a year and a half
+the urgings of the Reverend C. G. Thornton, a parson who had known
+the boy when at Brighton school. Vallance found Beardsley one afternoon<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</span>
+at Charlwood Street, his first Pimlico home, and came away
+wildly enthusiastic over the drawings that Beardsley showed him at
+his demand. It is to Vallance’s credit and judgment that he there and
+then turned the lad’s ambition towards becoming an artist by profession—an
+idea that up to this time Beardsley had not thought possible
+or practicable.</p>
+
+<p>Now whilst loving this man for it, one rather blinks at Vallance’s
+enthusiasm. On what drawings did his eyes rest, and wherein was he
+overwhelmed with the revelation? Burne-Jones has a little puzzled us
+in the summer; and now Vallance! Well, there were the futile “puerilia”—the
+<i>Pied Piper</i> stuff—which one cannot believe that Beardsley
+would show. There was the Burne-Jonesesque <i>Hamlet</i> from
+the <i>Bee</i> just published. Perhaps one or two other Burne-Jonesesques.
+He himself can recall nothing better. In fact Beardsley had
+not done anything better than the <i>Hamlet</i>. Then there was the <i>Scrap
+Book</i>! However, it was fortunate for the young Beardsley that he won
+so powerful a friend and such a scrupulous, honourable, and loyal
+friend as Aymer Vallance.</p>
+
+<p>On St. Valentine’s Day, the 14th of February 1892, before the
+winter was out, Vallance had brought about a meeting of Robert Ross
+and Aubrey Beardsley at a gathering at Vallance’s rooms. Robert
+Ross wrote of that first meeting after Beardsley was dead, and in any
+case his record of it needs careful acceptance; but Ross too was overwhelmed
+with the personality of the youth—Ross was always more
+interested in personality than in artistic achievement, fortunately, for
+his was not a very competent opinion on art for which he had the
+antique dealer’s flair rather than any deep appreciation. But he was a
+powerful friend to make for Beardsley. Ross had the entrance to the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</span>
+doors of fashion and power; he had a racy wit and was at heart a
+kindly man enough; and he had not only come to have considerable
+authority on matters of art and literature in the drawing-rooms of the
+great, but with editors. And he was doing much dealing in pictures.
+Ross, with his eternal quest of the fantastic and the unexpected, was
+fascinated by the strange originality and weird experience of the shy
+youth whom he describes as with “rather long hair, which instead of
+being <i>ebouriffé</i> as the ordinary genius is expected to wear it, was
+brushed smoothly and flatly on his head and over part of his immensely
+high and narrow brow.” Beardsley’s hair never gave me the
+impression of being brown; Max Beerbohm once described it better
+as “tortoise-shell”—it was an extraordinary colour, as artificial as
+his voice and manner. The “terribly drawn and emaciated face” was
+always cadaverous. The young fellow seems gradually to have thawed
+at this forgathering at Vallance’s, losing his shyness in congenial company,
+and was soon found to have an intimate knowledge of the
+British Museum and National Gallery. He talked more of literature
+and of music than of art. Ross was so affected by the originality of the
+young fellow’s conversation that he even attributed to Beardsley the
+oft-quoted jape of the old French wit that “it only takes one man to
+make an artist but forty to make an Academician.”</p>
+
+<p>It is well to try and discover what drew the fulsome praise of
+Beardsley’s genius from Ross at this first meeting—what precisely
+did Ross see in the inevitable portfolio which Beardsley carried under
+his arm as he entered the room? As regards whatever drawings were
+in the portfolio, Beardsley had evidently lately drawn the <i>Procession
+of Joan of Arc</i> in pencil which afterwards passed to Frederick Evans,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</span>
+a work which Beardsley at this time considered the only thing with
+any merit from his own hands, and from which he could not be induced
+to part for all Ross’s bribes, though he undertook to make a
+pen-and-ink replica from it for him, which he delivered to Ross in the
+May of 1892. The youngster had a truer and more just estimate of his
+own work than had his admirers.</p>
+
+<p>It is well to note at this stage that by mid-1892, on the eve of his
+twentieth year, Beardsley was so utterly mediocre in all artistic promise,
+to say nothing of achievement, that this commonplace <i>Procession
+of Joan of Arc</i> could stand out at the forefront of his career, and was,
+as we shall soon see, to be widely exploited in order to get him public
+recognition—in which it distinctly and deservedly failed. He himself
+was later to go hot and cold about the very mention of it and to be
+ashamed of it.</p>
+
+<p>We have Ross’s word for it at this time that “except in his manner,”
+his general appearance altered little to the end. Indeed, if Beardsley
+could only have trodden under foot the painful conceit which his
+rapidly increasing artistic circle fanned by their praise and liking for
+him, he might have escaped the eventual applause and comradeship
+of that shallow company to whom he proceeded and amongst whom
+he loved to glitter, yet in moments of depression scorned. But it is
+canting and stupid and unjust to make out that Beardsley was dragged
+down. Nothing of the kind. The young fellow’s whole soul and taste
+drew about him, he was not compelled into, the company of the erotic
+and the precious in craftsmanship. And Robert Ross had no small
+share in opening wide the doors to him.</p>
+
+<p>But it is well and only just to recognise without cant that by a curious<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</span>
+paradox, if Beardsley had been content to live in the mediæval
+atmosphere of the Æsthetic Movement into which his destiny now
+drifted him, for all its seriousness, its solemnity, and its fervour,
+his art and handling would have sunk to but recondite achievement
+at best. It was the wider range of the 18th century writers, especially
+the French writers—it was their challenge to the past—it was their
+very inquisition into and their very play with morals and eroticism,
+that brought the art of Beardsley to life where he might otherwise
+have remained, as he now was, solely concerned with craftsmanship.
+He was to run riot in eroticism—he was to treat sex with a marked
+frankness that showed it to be his god—but it is only right to say that
+the artist’s realm is the whole range of the human emotions; and he
+has as much right to utter the moods of sex as has the ordinary novelist
+of the “best seller” who relies on the discreet rousing of sexual
+moods in a more guarded and secret way, but who does rely on this
+mood nevertheless and above all for the creation of so-called “works
+that any girl may read.” The whole business is simply a matter of
+degree. And there is far too much cant about it all. Sex is vital to the
+race. It is when sex is debauched that vice ensues; and it is in the
+measure in which Beardsley was to debauch sex in his designs or not
+that he is alone subject to blame or praise in the matter.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst Beardsley in voice and manner developed a repulsive conceit—it
+was a pose of such as wished to rise above suspicion of being
+of the middle-class to show contempt for the middle-class—he was
+one of the most modest of men about his art. A delightful and engaging
+smile he had for everyone. He liked to be liked. It was only in the
+loneliness of his own conceit that he posed to himself as a sort of bitter<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</span>
+Whistler hating his fellowman. It increased his friendliness and
+opened the gates to his intimate side if he felt that anyone appreciated
+his work; but he never expected anyone to be in the least artistic, and
+thought none the less of such for it. He would listen to and discuss
+criticism of his work with an aloof and open mind, without rancour or
+patronage or resentment; and what was more, he would often act on
+it, as we shall see. Beardsley was a very likeable fellow to meet. When
+he was not posing as the enemy of the middle-classes he was a charming
+and witty companion.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime, in the late Spring or early Summer of 1892, Beardsley
+after a holiday, probably at Brighton, called on Burne-Jones again,
+and is said by some then to have made his attempt on Watts, so icily
+repelled. However, to Burne-Jones he went, urged to it largely by the
+ambition growing within him and fostered strenuously by Vallance
+and his friends, to dare all and make for art.</p>
+
+<p>Burne-Jones received him with characteristic generosity. And remember
+that Beardsley was now simply a blatant and unashamed
+mimic of Burne-Jones, and a pretty mediocre artist at that. We shall
+soon see a very different reception of the youth by a very different
+temperament. Burne-Jones, cordial and enthusiastic and sympathetic,
+gave the young fellow the soundest advice he ever had, saying that
+Beardsley “had learnt too much from the old masters and would benefit
+by the training of an art school.” From this interview young Beardsley
+came back in high fettle. He drew a caricature of himself being
+kicked down the steps of the National Gallery by the old masters.</p>
+
+<p>This Summer of 1892 saw Beardsley in Paris, probably on a holiday;
+and as probably with an introduction from Burne-Jones to Puvis<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</span>
+de Chavannes, who received the young fellow well, and greatly encouraged
+him, introducing him to one of his brother painters as “un
+jeune artiste Anglais qui fait des choses etonnantes.”</p>
+
+<p>Beardsley, with the astute earnestness with which he weighed all
+intelligent criticism, promptly followed the advice of Burne-Jones
+and Puvis de Chavannes, and put himself down to attend Professor
+Brown’s night-school at Westminster, whilst during the day he went
+on with his clerking at the Guardian Insurance Office. This schooling
+was to be of the scantiest, but it probably had one curious effect on
+his art—the Japanese art was on the town, so was Whistler; the studios
+talked Japanese prints as today they talk Cubism and Blast. And
+it is significant that the drawing which Beardsley made of Professor
+Brown, perhaps the best work of his hands up to this time, is strongly
+influenced by the scratchy nervous line of Whistler’s etching and is
+spaced in the Japanese convention. The irony of this Whistlerianism
+is lost upon us if we forget the bitter antagonism of Whistler and
+Burne-Jones at this very time—Whistler had published his <i>Gentle
+Art of Making Enemies</i> in 1890, and London had not recovered from
+its enjoyment of the spites of the great ones. Beardsley himself used
+to say that he had not been to Brown’s more than half a dozen times,
+but his eager eyes were quick to see.</p>
+
+<p>However, renewed health, an enlarging circle of artistic friends, an
+occasional peep into the home of genius, hours snatched from the city
+and spent in bookshops, the British Museum, the National Gallery,
+the Opera and the Concert room, revived ambition.</p>
+
+<p>And Vallance, cheered by Burne-Jones’s reception of the youth
+now sought to clinch matters by bringing Beardsley at his most impressionable
+age into the charmed circle of William Morris. The generous<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</span>
+soul of Vallance little understood Morris—or Beardsley; but
+his impulse was on all fours with his life-long devotion to the gifted
+boy’s cause.</p>
+
+<p>Before we eavesdrop at the William Morris meeting, let us rid ourselves
+of a few illusions that have gathered about Beardsley. First of
+all, Beardsley is on the edge of his twentieth birthday and has not
+made a drawing or shown a sign of anything but mediocre achievement.
+Next—and perhaps this is the most surprising as it is an interesting
+fact—Beardsley had scarcely, if indeed at all, seen a specimen
+of the Kelmscott books, their style, their decoration, or their
+content! Now Vallance, wrapped up in mediævalism, and Frederick
+Evans handling rich and rare hobbies in book-binding, probably never
+realised that to Beardsley it might be a closed book, and worse—probably
+not very exhilarating if opened, except for the rich blackness
+of some of the conventionally decorated pages. It is very important
+to remember this. And we must be just to Morris. Before we step
+further a-tiptoe to Morris’s house, remember another fact; Beardsley
+was not a thinker, not an intellectual man. He was a born artist to his
+long slender finger-tips; he sucked all the honey from art, whether
+fiction or drawing or decoration of any kind with a feverish eagerness
+that made the world think that because he was wholly bookish, he was
+therefore intellectual. He was remarkably unintellectual. He was a
+pure artist in that he was concerned wholly with the emotions, with
+his feelings, with the impressions that life or books made upon his
+senses. But he knew absolutely nothing of world questions. Beardsley
+knew and cared nothing for world affairs, knew and cared as much
+about deep social injustices or rights or struggles as a housemaid.
+They did not concern him, and he had but a yawn for such things.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</span>
+Social questions bored him undisguisedly. Indeed by Social he would
+only have understood the society of the great—his idea of it was
+an extravagantly dressed society of polished people with elaborate
+manners, who despised the middle-class virtues as being rather vulgar,
+who lived in a romantic whirl of exquisite flippancies not without
+picturesque adultery, doing each one as the mood took him—only
+doing it with an air and dressing well for the part.</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately, we have not been given Beardsley’s correspondence
+of these days, and the German edition of his letters has not been done
+into English; but read Beardsley’s letters during the last terrible years
+of his short life to his friend the poet Gray who became a priest, and
+you will be amazed by the absence of any intellectual or social interest
+of any kind whatsoever in the great questions that were racking the
+age. They might be the letters of a humdrum schoolboy—they even
+lack manhood—they do not suggest quite a fully developed intelligence.</p>
+
+<p>However, Morris had frequently of late expressed to Vallance his
+troubled state in getting “suitable illustrations” for his Kelmscott
+books—he was particularly plagued about the reprint he was then
+anxious to produce—<i>Sidonia the Sorceress</i>. Vallance leaped at the
+chance of getting the opening for young Beardsley; and at once persuaded
+Beardsley to make a drawing, add it to his portfolio, and all
+being ready, on a fine Sunday afternoon in the early summer of 1892,
+his portfolio under his arm, Beardsley with Vallance made their way
+to Hammersmith and entered the gates of the great man. Morris received
+the young man courteously. But he was about to be asked to
+swallow a ridiculous pill.</p>
+
+<p>We have seen that up to this time the portfolio was empty of all but<span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</span>
+mediocrity—a Burne-Jonesesque or so at best. To put the froth on
+the black trouble, Vallance had evidently never thought of the utter
+unfitness of Beardsley’s scratchy pen-drawn Japanesque grotesques
+for the Kelmscott Press; whilst Beardsley probably did not know what
+the Kelmscott Press meant. He was soon to know—and to achieve.
+Can one imagine a more fantastic act than taking this drawing to show
+to Morris? Imagine how a trivial, cheap, very tentative weak line, in
+grotesque swirls and wriggles, of Sidonia the Sorceress with the black
+cat appealed to Morris, who was as serious about the “fat blacks” of
+his Kelmscott decorations as about his first-born! Remember that up
+to this time Beardsley had not attempted his strong black line with
+flat black masses. Morris would have been a fool to commission this
+young fellow for the work, judging him by his then achievement. Let
+us go much further, Beardsley himself would not have been sure of
+fulfilling it—far less any of his sponsors. And yet!——</p>
+
+<p>Could Morris but have drawn aside the curtain of the future a few
+narrow folds! Within a few days of that somewhat dishearting meeting
+of these two men, the young Beardsley was to be launching on a
+rival publication to the Kelmscott Press—he was to smash it to pieces
+and make a masterpiece of what the Kelmscott enthusiasm had never
+been able to lift above monotonous mechanism! The lad only had to
+brood awhile over a Kelmscott to beat it at every point—and Frederick
+Evans was about to give him the chance, and he was to beat it
+to a dull futility. Anything further removed from Beardsley’s vision
+and essence than mediævalism it would be hard to find; but when the
+problem was set him, he faced it; and it is a miracle that he made
+of it what he did. However, not a soul who had thus far seen his work,
+not one who was at Morris’s house that Sunday afternoon, could foresee<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</span>
+it. Morris least of all. Morris was too self-centred to foresee what
+this lank young lad from an insurance office meant to himself and all
+for which he stood in book illustration. Vallance, for all his personal
+affection and loyalty to Morris, was disappointed in that Morris failed
+to be aroused to any interest whatsoever over the drawings in Beardsley’s
+portfolio. Morris went solemnly through the portfolio, thought
+little of the work, considered the features of the figures neither beautiful
+nor attractive, but probably trying to find <i>something</i> to praise,
+at last said “I see you have a feeling for draperies, and,” he added
+fatuously, “I should advise you to cultivate it”—and so saying he
+dismissed the whole subject. The eager youth was bitterly disappointed;
+but it is only fair to Beardsley to say that he was wounded
+by being repulsed and “not liked,” rather than that he was wounded
+about his drawings. It was a delightful trait in the man, his life long,
+that he was far more anxious for people to be friendly with him than
+to care for his drawings—he had no personal feeling whatsoever
+against anyone for disliking his work. The youth left the premises of
+William Morris with a fixed determination never to go there again—and
+he could never be induced to go.</p>
+
+<p>Within a few months of Beardsley’s shutting the gates of Kelmscott
+House on himself for the first and the last time, Vallance was to lead
+another forlorn hope to Morris on Beardsley’s behalf; but the lad refused
+to go, and Vallance went alone—but that is another story. For
+even as Morris shut the gates on Beardsley’s endeavour, there was to
+come another who was to fling open to Beardsley the gates to a far
+wider realm and enable him to pluck the beard of William Morris in
+the doing—one John Dent, a publisher.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</span>
+This Formative Year of sheer Burne-Jonesesque mimicry was to end
+in a moment of intense emotion for the young city clerk. He was
+about to leave the city behind him for ever—desert the night-school
+at Westminster—burn his boats behind him—and launch on his destiny
+as an artist.</p>
+<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="c5">V</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="c large sp">BEARDSLEY BECOMES AN ARTIST</p>
+
+<p class="c">Mid-1892 to Mid-1893—Twenty to twenty-one</p>
+
+<p class="c less sp p1">MEDIÆVALISM AND THE HAIRY-LINE JAPANESQUES</p>
+
+<p class="c less sp p1">“LE MORTE D’ARTHUR” AND “BON MOTS”</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap large">John M. Dent</span>, then a young publisher, was fired with the ambition
+to put forth the great literary classics for the ordinary man in a way
+that should be within the reach of his purse, yet rival the vastly costly
+bookmaking of William Morris and his allies of the Kelmscott Press.
+Dent fixed upon Sir Thomas Malory’s <i>Le Morte d’Arthur</i> to lead the
+way in his venture; and he confided his scheme to his friend Frederick
+Evans of the Jones and Evans bookshop in Queen Street, Cheapside.
+He planned to publish the handsome book in parts—300 copies on
+Dutch hand-made paper and fifteen hundred ordinary copies; but he
+was troubled and at his wit’s end as to a fitting decorator and illustrator.
+He must have a fresh and original artist.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f5">
+<img src="images/fig5.jpg" alt="hail">
+<p class="caption">HAIL MARY</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Frederick Evans and John Dent were talking over this perplexity
+in the Cheapside bookshop when Evans suddenly remarked to Dent
+that he believed he had found for him the very man; and he was
+showing to Dent Beardsley’s <i>Hail Mary</i>, when, looking up, he whispered:
+“and here he comes!” There entered a spick-and-span shadow
+of a young man like one risen from the well-dressed dead—Aubrey
+Beardsley had happened in, according to his daily wont, strolling over
+at the luncheon hour from the Guardian Insurance Office hard by for<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</span>
+his midday rummage amongst the books. It was like a gift from the
+gods! Frederick Evans nudged the other’s arm, pointing towards the
+strange youth, and repeated: “There’s your man!”</p>
+
+<p>To Beardsley’s surprise, Evans beckoned him towards his desk
+where he was in earnest colloquy with the man whom the young fellow
+was now to discover to be the well-known publisher.</p>
+
+<p>So Beardsley and J. M. Dent met.</p>
+
+<p>Introducing the youthful dandy to Dent as the ideal illustrator for
+his “<i>Morte d’Arthur</i>,” Evans somewhat bewildered Beardsley; the
+sudden splendour of the opportunity to prove his gifts rather took
+him aback. Dent however told the youth reassuringly that the recommendation
+of Frederick Evans was in itself enough, but if Beardsley
+would make him a drawing and prove his decorative gifts for this
+particular book, he would at once commission him to illustrate the
+work.</p>
+
+<p>Beardsley, frantically delighted and excited, undertook to draw a
+specimen design for Dent’s decision; yet had his hesitant modesties.
+Remember that up to this time he had practically drawn nothing of
+any consequence—he was utterly unknown—and his superb master-work
+that was to be, so different from and so little akin in any way to
+mediævalism, was hidden even from his own vision. The few drawings
+he had made were in mimicry of Burne-Jones and promised well
+enough for a mediæval missal in a pretty-pretty sort of way. He was
+becoming a trifle old for studentship—he was twenty before he made
+a drawing that was not mediocre. He had never seen one of the elaborate
+Morris books, and Frederick Evans had to show him a Kelmscott
+in order to give him some idea of what was in Dent’s mind—of
+what was expected of him.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</span></p>
+
+<p>At last he made to depart; and, shaking hands with Frederick
+Evans at the shop-door, he hesitated and, speaking low, said: “It’s
+too good a chance. I’m sure I shan’t be equal to it. I am not worthy of
+it.” Evans assured him that he only had to set himself to it and all
+would be well.</p>
+
+<p>Within a few days, Beardsley putting forth all his powers to create
+the finest thing he could, and making an eager study of the Kelmscott
+tradition, took the drawing to Dent—the elaborate and now famous
+Burne-Jonesesque design which is known as <i>The Achieving of the
+San Grael</i>, which must have been as much a revelation of his powers
+to the youth himself as it was to Dent. The drawing was destined to
+appear in gravure as the frontispiece to the Second volume of the
+<i>Morte d’Arthur</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Now it is most important to note that this, Beardsley’s first serious
+original work, shows him in mid-1892, at twenty, to have made a bold
+effort to create a marked style by combining his Burne-Jonesesque
+mediævalism with his Japanesques of the Hairy Line; <i>and the design
+is signed with his early “Japanesque mark.”</i> It is his first use of the
+Japanesque mark. Any designs signed with his name before this time
+reveal unmistakably the initials A. V. B. The early “Japanesque
+mark” is always stunted and rude. Beardsley’s candlesticks were a
+sort of mascot to him; and I feel sure that the Japanese mark was
+meant for three candles and three flames—a baser explanation was
+given by some, but it was only the evil thought of those who tried to
+see evil in all that Beardsley did.</p>
+
+<p>Dent at once commissioned the youth to illustrate and decorate the
+<i>Morte d’Arthur</i>, which was to begin to appear in parts a year thereafter,
+in the June of 1893—the second volume in 1894.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</span></p>
+
+<p>So Aubrey Beardsley entered upon his first great undertaking—to
+mimic the mediæval woodcut or what the Morris School took to be the
+mediæval woodcut and—to better his instruction. Frederick Evans
+set the diadem of his realm upon the lad’s brow in a bookshop in
+Cheapside; and John Dent threw open the gates to that fantastic realm
+so that he might enter in. With the prospect of an art career, Beardsley
+was now to have the extraordinary good fortune to meet a literary
+man who was to vaunt him before the world and reveal him to the
+public—Lewis C. Hind.</p>
+
+<p class="gtb">******</p>
+
+<p>Boldly launching on an artistic career, encouraged by this elaborate
+and important work for Dent, Beardsley, at his sister’s strong
+urging and solicitation, about his twentieth birthday resigned his
+clerkship in the Guardian Insurance Office and for good and all turned
+his back on the city. At the same time, feeling that the British Museum
+and the National Gallery gave him more teaching than he was getting
+at the studio, he withdrew from Brown’s school at Westminster. Being
+now in close touch with Dent, and having his day free, Beardsley
+was asked to make some grotesques for the three little volumes of
+<i>Bon Mots</i> by famous wits which Dent was about to publish. So it came
+about that Beardsley poured out his Japanesque grotesques and <i>Morte
+d’Arthur</i> mediævalisms side by side! and was not too careful as to
+which was the grotesque and which the mediævalism. For the <i>Bon
+Mots</i> he made no pretence of illustration—the florid scribbling lines
+drew fantastic designs utterly unrelated to the text or atmosphere of
+the wits, and were about as thoroughly bad as illustrations in the vital
+quality of an illustration as could well be. In artistic achievement they
+were trivialities, mostly scratchy and tedious, some of them better<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</span>
+than others, but mostly revealing Beardsley’s defects and occasionally
+dragging him back perilously near to the puerilia of his boyhood. But
+the severe conditions and limitations of the <i>Morte d’Arthur</i> page held
+Beardsley to good velvety blacks and strong line and masses, and were
+the finest education in art that he ever went through—for he taught
+himself craftsmanship as he went in the <i>Morte d’Arthur</i>. It made him.</p>
+
+<p>One has only to look at the general mediocrity of the grotesques
+for the <i>Bon Mots</i> to realise what a severe self-discipline the solid
+black decorations of the mediæval <i>Morte d’Arthur</i> put upon Beardsley
+for the utterance of his genius. Beardsley knew full well that his
+whole career depended on those designs for the <i>Morte d’Arthur</i>, and
+he strove to reach his full powers in making them.</p>
+
+<p>Anning Bell was at this time pouring out his bookplates and kindred
+designs, and in many of Beardsley’s drawings one could almost
+tell which of Anning Bell’s decorations he had been looking at last.
+To Walter Crane he owed less, but not a little. Greek vase-painting
+was not lost upon Beardsley, but as yet he had scant chance or leisure
+to make a thorough study of it, as he was to do later to the prodigious
+enhancement of his powers; he was content as yet to acknowledge his
+debt to Greece through Anning Bell.</p>
+
+<p>We know from Beardsley’s letters to his old school that he was
+during this autumn at work upon drawings for Miss Burney’s <i>Evelina</i>
+and, whether they have vanished or were never completed, on drawings
+for Hawthorne’s <i>Tales</i> and Mackenzie’s <i>Man of Feeling</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Such writers as recall the early Beardsley recall him through the
+glamour that colours their backward glancing from the graveside
+of achieved genius. The “revelations on opening the portfolio” are
+written “after the event,” when the contents of the portfolio have<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</span>
+been forgotten and deluding memory flings amongst their drab performance
+masterpieces rose-leafwise from the <i>Rape of the Lock</i> and
+<i>The Savoy</i> for makeweight. Beardsley did not “arrive” at once—we
+are about to see him arrive. But once he found himself, his swift
+achievement is the more a marvel—almost a miracle.</p>
+
+<p>It was fortunate for Dent that Beardsley flung himself at the
+decoration of the <i>Morte d’Arthur</i> with almost mad enthusiasm. He
+knew that he had to “make good” or go down, and so back to the
+city. And he poured forth his designs in the quiet of his candles’ light,
+the blinds drawn, and London asleep—poured them forth in that secret
+atmosphere that detested an eyewitness to his craftsmanship and
+barred the door to all. Most folk would reason that Beardsley, being
+free of the city, had now his whole day to work; but the lay mind
+rarely grasps the fact that true artistic utterance is compact of mood
+and is outside mere industry or intellectual desire to work. To have
+more time meant a prodigious increase in Beardsley’s powers to brood
+upon his art but not to create it. Not a bit of it. He was about the most
+sociable butterfly that ever enjoyed the sunshine of life as it passed.
+By day he haunted the British Museum, the bookshops, the print-shops,
+or paid social calls, delighting to go to the Café Royal and such
+places. No one ever saw him work. He loved music above all the arts.
+In the coming years, when he was to be a vogue for a brief season,
+people would ask when Beardsley worked—he was everywhere—but
+for answer he only laughed gleefully, his pose being that he
+never worked nor had need to work. He had as yet no footing in
+the houses of the great; and it was fortunate for his art that he had
+not, for he was steeping himself in all that touched or enhanced that
+art.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</span></p>
+
+<p>Beardsley, when he sat down to his table to create art, came to his
+effort with no cant about inspiration. He set himself an idea to fulfil,
+and the paper on which he rough-pencilled that idea was the only
+sketch he made for the completed design—when the pen and ink had
+next done their work, the pencil vanished under the eliminating rubber.
+The well-known pencil sketch of <i>A Girl</i> owned by Mr. Evans
+shows Beardsley selecting the firm line of the face from amidst the
+rough rhythm of his scrawls.</p>
+
+<p>A great deal has been made of Beardsley’s only working by candlelight;
+as a matter of fact there is nothing unusual in an artist, whether
+of the pen or the brush, who does not employ colour, making night
+into day. It is an affair of temperament, though of course Beardsley
+was quite justified in posing as a genius thereby if it helped him to
+recognition.</p>
+
+<p>Beardsley’s career had made it impossible for him to work except
+at night; and by the time his day was free to him he was set by habit
+into working at night. There would be nothing unnatural in his shutting
+out the daylight and lighting his candles if he were seized by the
+mood to work by day. He shared with far greater artists than he the
+dislike of being seen at work, and is said to have shut out even his
+mother and sister when drawing; and, like Turner, when caught at
+the job he hurriedly hid away the tools of his craft; pens, ink, paper,
+and drawing upon the paper, were all thrust away at once. No one
+has ever been known to see him at work. He did not draw from a
+model. We can judge better by his unfinished designs—than from
+any record by eyewitnesses—that he finished his drawing in ink on
+the piece of paper on which he began it, without sketch or study—that
+he began by vague pencil scrawls and rough lines to indicate
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</span>the general rhythm and composition and balance of the thing as a
+whole—that he then drew in with firmer pencil lines the main design—and
+then inked in the pen-line and masses.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f6">
+<img src="images/fig6.jpg" alt="sketch">
+<p class="caption">PENCIL SKETCH OF A CHILD</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Now, Beardsley being a born poser, and seeing that the philistine
+mind of the hack-journalist was focused on getting a “story,” astutely
+made much of his only being able to work by candlelight as he drew
+the journalistic romance-mongering eyes to the two candlesticks of
+the Empire period, and encouraged their suggestion that he brought
+forth the masterpiece only under their spell. It was good copy; and it
+spread him by advertisement. Besides, it sounded fearsomely “original,”
+and held a taint of genius. And there was something almost
+deliciously wicked in the subtle confession: “I am happiest when the
+lamps of the town have been lit.” He must be at all costs “the devil
+of a fellow.”</p>
+
+<p>Beardsley arranged the room, in his father’s and mother’s house,
+which was his first studio so that it should fit his career as artist. He
+received his visitors in this scarlet room, seated at a small table on
+which stood two tall tapering candlesticks—the candlesticks without
+which he could not work. And his affectations and artificialities of
+pose and conversation were at this time almost painful. But he was
+very young and very ambitious, and had not yet achieved much
+else than pose whereon to lean for reputation.</p>
+
+<p class="gtb">******</p>
+
+<p>His rapid increase of power—and one now begins to understand
+Vallance’s enthusiasm—induced Vallance to make a last bid to win
+the favour of Morris for the gifted Aubrey. It was about Yuletide of
+1892, half a year after Morris’s rebuff had so deeply wounded the
+youth, that Vallance, who could not persuade Beardsley to move another<span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</span>
+foot towards Morris’s house a second time, induced the young
+fellow to let him have a printed proof from the <i>Morte d’Arthur</i> of <i>The
+Lady of the Lake telling Arthur of the sword Excalibur</i> to show to
+Morris. Several of Morris’s friends were present when Vallance arrived.
+Now again we must try and get into Morris’s skin. He was
+shown a black and white decoration for the printed page made by a
+young fellow who, a few months before, had been so utterly ignorant
+of the world-shattering revolution in bookmaking at the Kelmscott
+Press that he had actually offered his services on the strength of a
+trumpery grotesque in poor imitation of a Japanese drawing, which
+of course would have fitted quaintly with Caxton’s printed books!
+but here, by Thor and Hammersmith, was the selfsame young coxscomb,
+mastering the Kelmscott idea and in one fell drawing surpassing
+it and making the whole achievement of Morris’s earnest workers
+look tricky and meretricious and unutterably dull! Of course there
+was a storm of anger from Morris.</p>
+
+<p>Morris’s hot indignation at what he called “an act of usurpation”
+which he could not permit, revealed to Vallance the sad fact that any
+hope of these two men working together was futile. “A man ought to
+do his own work,” roared Morris, quite forgetting how he was as busy
+as a burglar filching from Caxton and mediæval Europe. However, so
+hotly did Morris feel about the whole business that it was only at Sir
+Edward Burne-Jones’s earnest urging that Morris was prevented from
+writing an angry remonstrance to Dent.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f7">
+<img src="images/fig7.jpg" alt="queen">
+<p class="caption">HOW QUEEN GUENEVER MADE HER A NUN</p>
+<p class="caption"><i>from “Le Morte D’Arthur”</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>How Morris fulfilled his vaunted aim of lifting printing to its old
+glory by attacking any and every body else who likewise strove, is not
+easy to explain. But here we may pause for a moment to discuss a
+point much misunderstood in Beardsley’s career. Vallance, a man of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</span>high integrity and noble ideals, sadly deplores the loss both to Beardsley
+and to Morris himself through Morris treating the young fellow
+as a rival instead of an ally. But whatever loss it may have been to
+Morris, it was as a fact a vast gain to Beardsley. Beardsley pricked the
+bubble of the mediæval “fake” in books; but had he instead entered
+into the Morris circle he would have begun and ended as a mediocrity.
+He had the craftsmanship to surpass the Kelmscott Press; but he had
+in his being no whit in common with mediævalism. Art has nothing to
+do with beauty or ugliness or the things that Morris and his age mistook
+for art. It is a far vaster and mightier significance than all that.
+And the tragic part of the lad’s destiny lay in this: he had either to
+sink his powers in the “art-fake” that his clean-soul’d and noble-hearted
+friend took to be art, or he had to pursue the vital and true
+art of uttering what emotions life most intensely revealed to him, even
+though, in the doing, he had to wallow with swine. And let us have
+no cant about it: the “mediæval” decorations for the <i>Morte d’Arthur</i>
+were soon revealing that overwhelming eroticism, that inquisition into
+sex, which dominated Beardsley’s whole artistic soul from the day he
+turned his back on the city and became an artist. Beardsley would
+never have been, could never have been, a great artist in the Morris
+circle, or in seeking to restore a dead age through mediæval research.
+That there was no need for him to go to the other extreme and associate
+with men of questionable habits, low codes of honour, and
+licentious life, is quite true; but the sad part of the business was, as
+we shall see, that it was precisely just such men who alone enabled
+the young fellow to create his master-work where others would have
+let him starve and the music die in him unsung.</p>
+
+<p>William Morris was to die in the October of 1896, four years thereafter,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</span>
+but he was to live long enough to see the lad he envied outrival
+him in his “mediæval fake”—find himself—and give to the world in
+<i>The Savoy</i> a series of decorations that have made his name immortal
+and placed his art amongst the supreme achievement of the ages,
+where William Morris’s vaunted decorated printed page is become an
+elaborate boredom.</p>
+
+<p class="gtb">******</p>
+
+<p>Morris was not the only one who baffled the efforts of Vallance to get
+the young Beardsley a hearing. By John Lane, fantastically enough,
+he was also to be rejected! Beardsley was always full of vast schemes
+and plans; one of these at the moment was the illustrating of Meredith’s
+<i>Shaving of Shagpat</i>—a desire to which he returned and on
+which he harped again and again. Vallance, hoping that John Lane,
+a member of the firm of Elkin Mathews and John Lane, then new and
+unconventional publishers, would become the bridge to achievement,
+brought about a meeting between Beardsley and John Lane at a small
+gathering at Vallance’s rooms as Yuletide drew near. But John Lane
+was not impressed; and nothing came of it. It was rather an irony of
+fate that Beardsley, who resented this rejection by John Lane, for
+some reason, with considerable bitterness, was in a twelvemonth to
+be eagerly sought after by the same John Lane to their mutual success,
+increase in reputation, triumph, and prodigious advertisement.</p>
+
+<p>However neither the frown of William Morris, nor the icy aloofness
+of Watts, nor the indifference of John Lane, could chill the ardour of
+the young Aubrey Beardsley. He was free. He had two big commissions.
+His health greatly improved. He was happy in his work. Having
+mastered the possibilities and the limitations of the Kelmscott
+book decoration, he concentrated on surpassing it. At once his line<span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</span>
+began to put on strength. And the Japanese convention tickled him
+hugely—here he could use his line without troubling about floor or
+ceiling or perspective in which to place his figures. He could relieve
+the monotony of the heavy <i>Morte d’Arthur</i> convention by drawing
+fantasies in this Japanesque vein for <i>Bon Mots</i>, both conventions
+rooted whimsically enough in Burne-Jonesesques. And so it came
+that his first half-year as an artist saw him pouring out work of a
+quality never before even hinted at as being latent in him.</p>
+
+<p class="gtb">******</p>
+
+<p>Such then was the state of affairs when, with the inevitable black
+portfolio containing work really worth looking at under his arm, the
+young fellow in his twenty-first year was to be led by Vallance into
+the inestimable good fortune of meeting a man who was to bring his
+achievement into the public eye and champion his interests at every
+hand his life long.</p>
+
+<p>The year before the lad Beardsley left the Brighton Grammar
+School to enter upon a commercial career in the city, in 1887 there
+had left the city and entered upon a literary life, as subeditor of <i>The
+Art Journal</i>, Lewis C. Hind. Five years of such apprenticeship done,
+Hind had given up the magazine in 1892 in order to start a new art
+magazine for students. Hind had had a copy privately printed as a
+sort of “dummy,” which he showed to his friend and fellow-clubman
+John Lane, then on his part becoming a publisher. It so happened
+that a very astute and successful business-man in the Japanese trade
+called Charles Holme who lived at the Red House at Bexley Heath,
+the once home of William Morris, had an ambition to create an art
+magazine. John Lane, the friend of both men, brought them together—and
+in the December of 1892 the contract was signed between<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</span>
+Charles Holme and Lewis Hind—and <i>The Studio</i>, as it was christened
+by Hind to Holme’s great satisfaction, began to take shape. Hind saw
+the commercial flair of Charles Holme as his best asset—Holme saw
+Hind in the editorial chair as <i>his</i> best asset.</p>
+
+<p>So the new year of 1893 dawned. It was the habit of Lewis Hind
+to go of a Sunday afternoon to the tea-time gatherings of the literary
+and artistic friends of Wilfred and Alice Meynell at their house in Palace
+Court; and it was on one of these occasions, early in the January
+of 1893, that Aymer Vallance entered with a tall slender “hatchet-faced”
+pallid youth. Hind, weary of pictures and drawings over which
+he had been poring for weeks in his search for subjects for his new
+magazine, was listening peacefully to the music of Vernon Blackburn
+who was playing one of his own songs at the piano, when the stillness
+of the room was broken by the entry of the two new visitors. In an
+absent mood he suddenly became aware that Vallance had moved to
+his side with his young friend. He looked up at the youth who stood
+by Vallance’s elbow and became aware of a lanky figure with a big
+nose, and yellow hair plastered down in a “quiff” or fringe across his
+forehead much in the style of Phil May—a pallid silent young man,
+but self-confident, self-assured, alert and watchful—with the inevitable
+black portfolio under his arm; the insurance clerk, Aubrey
+Beardsley. Hind, disinclined for art babble, weary of undiscovered
+“geniuses” being foisted upon him, but melting under the hot enthusiasm
+of Vallance, at last asked the pale youth to show him his
+drawings. On looking through Beardsley’s portfolio, Hind at once decided
+that here at any rate was work of genius. Now let us remember
+that this sophisticated youth of the blasé air was not yet twenty-one.
+In that portfolio Hind tells us were the two frontispieces for <i>Le Morte</i><span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</span>
+<i>d’Arthur</i>, the <i>Siegfried Act II</i>, the <i>Birthday of Madame Cigale</i>—<i>Les
+Revenants de Musique</i>—“Some <i>Salome</i> drawings”—with several
+chapter-headings and tailpieces for the <i>Morte d’Arthur</i>. Hind’s memory
+probably tricked him as to the <i>Salome</i> drawings; for, in refreshing
+his memory, likely as not, he looked at the first number of <i>The Studio</i>
+published three months later. Wilde’s <i>Salome</i> did not see print until
+February, a full month afterwards and was quite unknown.</p>
+
+<p>However, Hind at once offered the pages of his new art venture,
+<i>The Studio</i>, to the delighted youth. What was more, he arranged that
+Beardsley should bring his drawings the next morning to <i>The Studio</i>
+offices. When he did so, Charles Holme was quick to support Hind;
+indeed, to encourage the youngster, he there and then bought the
+drawings themselves from the thrilled Aubrey.</p>
+
+<p>Hind commissioned Joseph Pennell, as being one of the widest-read
+critics, to write the appreciation of the designs, and blazon
+Beardsley abroad—and whilst Pennell was frankly more than a little
+perplexed by all the enthusiasm poured into his ears, he undertook
+the job. But Hind, though he remained to the end the lad’s friend and
+greatly liked him, was not to be his editor after all. William Waldorf
+Astor, the millionaire, had bought the daily <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i> and
+the weekly <i>Pall Mall Budget</i> and was launching a new monthly to
+be called <i>The Pall Mall Magazine</i>. Lord Brownlow’s nephew, Harry
+Cust, appointed editor of the <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i>, asked Hind to become
+editor of the weekly <i>Budget</i> at a handsome salary; and Hind,
+thus having to look about of a sudden for someone to replace himself
+as editor of the new art magazine, about to be launched, found Gleeson
+White to take command of <i>The Studio</i> in his stead. But even
+as he set Gleeson White in the vacant editorial chair, Hind took<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</span>
+Beardsley with him also to what was to be Hind’s three years editorship
+of the <i>Pall Mall Budget</i>, for which, unfortunately, the young
+fellow wrought little but such unmitigated trash as must have somewhat
+dumbfounded Hind.</p>
+
+<p>So the first number of <i>The Studio</i> was to appear in the April of
+1893 glorifying a wonderful youth—his name Aubrey Beardsley!</p>
+
+<p class="gtb">******</p>
+
+<p>It was thus also, through Lewis Hind, that the young Beardsley had
+the good fortune to meet Gleeson White. Of the men who made the
+artistic and literary life of London at this time, Gleeson White was one
+of the largest of vision, the soundest in taste, the most generous in
+encouragement. A strangely modest man, he was said to have invented
+much of the wit of the ’nineties given to others’ tongues, for he had
+the strange conceit of crediting the man with uttering the witticism
+who looked as if he ought to have said it. That was usurpation which
+men like Whistler and Wilde could forgive—and they forgave Gleeson
+White much. Gleeson White, who was well known in the Arts and
+Crafts movement of the day that hinged on Morris, leaped with joy
+at Hind’s offer to make him editor of a magazine that was to voice the
+aspirations and to blaze forth the achievements of the Arts and Crafts
+men.</p>
+
+<p>On the eve of publication, Hind and Gleeson White asked for a
+cover design for <i>The Studio</i> from the much gratified youth, who went
+home thrilled with the prospect that set his soul on fire—here was
+<i>réclame</i>! as he always preferred to call being advertised, or what the
+studios call being “boosted.” Indeed, was not Beardsley to appear in
+the first number of <i>The Studio</i> after Frank Brangwyn, then beginning<span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</span>
+to come to the front, in a special article devoted to his work by Pennell,
+the most vocal of critics, with illustrations from the portfolio in
+his several styles—the Japanesque, and the mediæval <i>Morte d’Arthur</i>
+blackletter? Was it not to be a tribute to “a new illustrator”? In Pennell
+there stepped into the young Beardsley’s life a man who could
+make his voice heard, and, thanks to Hind, he was to champion the
+lad through rain and shine, through black and sunny days. And what
+was of prodigious value to Beardsley, Pennell did not gush irrelevantly
+nor over-rate his worth as did so many—he gave it just and
+fair and full value.</p>
+
+<p>All the same we must not make too much of Beardsley’s indebtedness
+to the first number of <i>The Studio</i> in bringing him before the public.
+Pennell had the advantage of seeing a portfolio which really did
+contain very remarkable work—at the same time it was scarcely
+world-shattering—and it is to Pennell’s eternal credit for artistic honesty
+and critical judgment that he did not advertise it at anything more
+than its solid value. Pennell was writing for a new magazine of arts
+and crafts; and his fierce championship of process-reproduction was
+as much a part of his aim as was Beardsley’s art—and all of us who
+have been saved from the vile debauching of our line-work by the
+average wood-engravers owe it largely to Pennell that process-reproduction
+won through—and not least of all Beardsley. What Pennell
+says about Beardsley is sober and just and appreciative; but it was
+when Beardsley developed far vaster powers and rose to a marvellous
+style that Pennell championed him, most fitly, to the day he lay down
+and died.</p>
+
+<p>The first number of <i>The Studio</i> did not appear until the April of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</span>
+1893; it was the first public recognition of Aubrey Beardsley it is
+true; but an utterly ridiculous legend has grown around <i>The Studio</i>
+that it made Beardsley famous. It did absolutely nothing of the kind.
+<i>The Studio</i> itself was no particular success, far less any article in it.
+Tom, Dick, and Harry, did not understand it; were not interested
+greatly in the arts or crafts; and particularly were they bored by
+mediæval stiffness, dinginess, gloom, and solemn uncomfortable
+pomp. Even the photographers had not at that time “gone into oak.”
+It was only in our little narrow artistic and literary world—and a very
+narrow inner circle at that—where <i>The Studio</i> caused any talk, and
+Beardsley interested not very excitedly. We had grown rather blasé
+to mediævalism; had begun to find it out; and the Japanesque was a
+somewhat dinted toy—we preferred the Japanese masterpieces of the
+Japanese even to the fine bastard Japanesques of Whistler. So that,
+even in studio and literary salon, and at the tea-tables of the very
+earnest people with big red or yellow ties, untidy corduroy suits, and
+bilious aspirations after beauty, Beardsley at best was only one of the
+many subjects when he was a subject at all. It was bound to be so—he
+had done no great work as far as the public knew. Lewis Hind, who
+at the New Year had gone from <i>The Studio</i> offices to edit the <i>Pall
+Mall Budget</i>, in a fit of generous enthusiasm commissioned Beardsley
+to make caricatures or portrait-sketches at the play or opera or the
+like; and from the February of 1893 for some few weeks, Beardsley,
+utterly incompetent for the journalistic job, unfortunately damaged
+his reputation and nearly brought it to the gutter with a series of the
+most wretched drawings imaginable—drawings without one redeeming
+shred of value—work almost inconceivable as being from the
+same hands that were decorating the <i>Morte d’Arthur</i>, which however<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</span>
+the public had not yet seen, for it did not begin to appear in print
+until the mid-year. But, as a matter of fact, most of the designs for
+<i>Morte d’Arthur</i> were made by the time that Beardsley began his miserable
+venture in the <i>Pall Mall Budget</i>. The first volume of <i>Bon Mots</i>
+appeared in the April of 1893—the <i>Sydney Smith and Sheridan</i> volume—although
+few heard of or saw the little book, and none paid it
+respect. It was pretty poor stuff.</p>
+
+<p class="gtb">******</p>
+
+<p>Now, though the <i>Morte d’Arthur</i> was in large part done before <i>The
+Studio</i> eulogy by Pennell appeared in this April of 1893, otherwise
+the eulogy would never have been written, it is well to cast a glance at
+Beardsley’s art as it was first revealed to an indifferent public in <i>The
+Studio</i> article. There are examples from the <i>Morte d’Arthur</i>, of which
+the very fine chapter-heading of the knights in combat on foot
+amongst the dandelion-like leaves of a forest, with their sword-like
+decoration, was enough to have made any reputation. The most mediocre
+design of the lot, a tedious piece of Renaissance mimicry of Mantegna
+called <i>The Procession of Joan of Arc entering Orleans</i> was curiously
+enough the favourite work of Beardsley’s own choice a year
+gone by when he made it—so far had he now advanced beyond this
+commonplace untidy emptiness! Yet the writers on art seem to have
+been more impressed by this futility than by the far more masterly
+<i>Morte d’Arthur</i> decorations. If the writers were at sea, the public can
+scarce be blamed. The <i>Siegfried Act II</i> of mid-1892, which Beardsley
+had given to his patron Burne-Jones, shows excellent, if weird and
+fantastic, combination by Beardsley of his Japanesque and Burne-Jonesesque
+mimicry—it is his typically early or “hairy-line” Japanesque,
+hesitant in stroke and thin in quality. The <i>Birthday of Madame</i><span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</span>
+<i>Cigale</i> and <i>Les Revenants de Musique</i> show the Japanesque more asserting
+itself over the mock mediæval, and are akin to <i>Le Debris d’un
+Poète</i> and <i>La Femme Incomprise</i>. But there was also a Japanesque in
+<i>The Studio</i> which was to have an effect on Beardsley’s destiny that he
+little foresaw! There had been published in the February of 1893
+in French the play called <i>Salome</i> by Oscar Wilde, which made an extraordinary
+sensation in literary circles and in the Press. Throughout
+the newspapers was much controversy about the leopard-like ecstasy
+of Salome when the head of John the Baptist has been given to her
+on a salver: “J’ai baisé ta bouche, Iokanaan; j’ai baisé ta bouche.”
+Beardsley, struck by the lines, made his now famous Japanesque
+drawing, just in time to be included in <i>The Studio</i> which was to appear
+in April. It was this design that, a few weeks later, decided Elkin
+Mathews and John Lane that in Beardsley they had found the destined
+illustrator of the English <i>Salome</i>, translated by Lord Alfred
+Douglas, which was soon to appear. In that <i>Salome</i> was to be a marvellous
+significance for Aubrey Beardsley.</p>
+
+<p>It is interesting to note in surveying the first number of <i>The Studio</i>,
+the rapid development of Beardsley’s art from the fussy flourishy
+design of this <i>Salome</i> drawing to the more severe and restrained edition
+of the same design that was so soon to appear in the book. The
+hairy Japanesque line has departed.</p>
+
+<p>Note also another fact: The title of the article published in <i>The
+Studio</i> first number shows that in March 1893 when it was written
+at latest, Beardsley had decided to drop his middle name of Vincent;
+and the V forthwith disappears from the initials and signature to his
+work—the last time it was employed was on the indifferent large pencil
+drawing of <i>Sandro Botticelli</i> made in 1893 about the time that <i>The</i><span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</span>
+<i>Studio</i> was to appear, as Vallance tells us, having been made by
+Beardsley to prove his own contention that an artist made his figures
+unconsciously like himself, whereupon at Vallance’s challenge he
+proceeded to build a Sandro Botticelli from Botticelli’s paintings.
+Vallance is unlikely to have made a mistake about the date, but the
+work has the hesitation and the lack of drawing and of decision of the
+year before.</p>
+
+<p>Above all, an absolutely new style has been born. Faked Mediævalism
+is dead—and buried. Whistler’s Peacock Room has triumphed.
+Is it possible that Beardsley’s visit to the Peacock Room was at this
+time, and not so early as 1891? At any rate Beardsley is now to mimic
+Whistler’s peacocks so gorgeously painted on the shutters on the Peacock
+Room as he had heretofore imitated Burne-Jones.</p>
+
+<p class="gtb">******</p>
+
+<p>By his twenty-first birthday, then, Beardsley had practically done
+with the <i>Morte d’Arthur</i>; and it was only by the incessant prayers and
+supplications of Dent and the solemn urging of Frederick Evans to
+the young fellow to fulfil his word of honour and his bond, that
+Beardsley was persuaded, grudgingly, to make another design for it.
+He was wearied to tears by the book, and had utterly cast mediævalism
+from him before he was through it. He was now intensely and feverishly
+concentrated on the development of the Japanesque. And
+he was for ever poring over the Greek vase-paintings at the British
+Museum. And another point must be pronounced, if we are to understand
+Beardsley; with returning bodily vigour he was encouraging
+that erotic mania so noticeable in gifted consumptives, so that eroticism
+became the dominant emotion and significance in life to him. He
+was steeping himself in study of phallic worship—and when all’s<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</span>
+said, the worship of sex has held a very important place in the earlier
+civilizations, and is implicit in much that is not so early.</p>
+
+<p>It was indeed fortunate for Dent that he had procured most of
+the decorations he wanted for the <i>Morte d’Arthur</i> in the young fellow’s
+first few months of vigorous enthusiasm for the book in the dying
+end of the year of 1892, to which half year the <i>Morte d’Arthur</i>
+almost wholly belongs in Beardsley’s achievement. Dent was thereby
+enabled to launch on the publication of the parts in the June of 1893,
+about the time that Beardsley, changing his home, was to be turning
+his back on mediævalism and Burne-Jonesism for ever. It is obvious to
+such as search the book that the <i>Morte d’Arthur</i> was never completed—we
+find designs doing duty towards the end again more than once—but
+Dent had secured enough to make this possible without offensive
+reiteration.</p>
+
+<p>There appeared in the <i>Pall Mall Magazine</i> for June 1893, drawn
+in April 1893, as the first <i>Studio</i> number was appearing, a design
+known as <i>The Neophyte</i>, or to give its full affected name, “<i>Of a Neophyte,
+and how the Black Art was revealed unto him by the Fiend
+Asomuel</i>”; it was followed in the July number by a drawing of May
+1893 called <i>The Kiss of Judas</i>—both drawings reveal an unmistakable
+change in handling, and the <i>Neophyte</i> a remarkable firmness of
+andform, and a strange hauntingness and atmosphere heretofore unexpressed.
+Beardsley had striven to reach it again and again in his
+Burne-Jonesque frontispiece to the <i>Morte d’Arthur</i> and kindred works
+in his “hairy line”; but the work of Carlos Schwabe and other so-called
+symbolists was being much talked of at this time, and several
+French illustrators were reaching quite wonderful effects through
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</span>it—it was not lost on Beardsley’s quick mind, especially its grotesque
+possibilities.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f8">
+<img src="images/fig8.jpg" alt="revealed">
+<p class="caption">“OF A NEOPHYTE AND HOW THE BLACK ART WAS REVEALED<br>
+UNTO HIM”</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>It is easy for the layman and the business man to blame Beardsley
+for shrinking from fulfilling his bond as regards a contract for a long
+sequence of drawings to illustrate a book; but it is only just to recognise
+that it requires a frantic and maddening effort of will in any artist
+to keep going back and employing a treatment that he has left
+behind him and rejected, and when he has advanced to such a handling
+as <i>The Neophyte</i>. This difficulty for Beardsley will be more obvious
+to the lay mind a little further on.</p>
+
+<p>It is a peculiar irony that attributes Beardsley’s <i>Morte d’Arthur</i>
+phase to 1893-94; for whilst it is true that it was from mid-1893
+that the book began to be published, Beardsley had turned his back
+upon it for months—indeed his principal drawings had been made for
+it in late 1892, and only with difficulty could they be extracted from
+him even in early 1893! The second of the two elaborate drawings in
+his “hairy line” called <i>The Questing Beast</i> is dated by Beardsley
+himself “March 8, 1893”—as for 1894, it would have been impossible
+for Beardsley by that time to make such a drawing. Even as it is,
+the early 1893 decorations differ utterly from the more mediæval
+or Burne-Jonesesques decorations of late 1892; and by the time
+the <i>Morte d’Arthur</i> began to be given to the public, Beardsley, as we
+have seen, had completely rejected his whole Burne-Jones convention.</p>
+
+<p>The two cover-designs for <i>The Studio No. I</i> in April 1893 were
+obviously drawn at the same time as the design for the covers of the
+<i>Morte d’Arthur</i>—in the early Spring of 1893. They could well be
+exchanged without the least loss. They practically write Finis to the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</span>
+<i>Morte d’Arthur</i> drawings. They make a good full stop to the record
+of Beardsley’s achievement in his twentieth year.</p>
+
+<p>There is a story told of Dent’s anxieties over Beardsley’s exasperating
+procrastination in delivering the later drawings for the <i>Morte
+d’Arthur</i> on the eve of its appearing in numbers. Dent called on
+Mrs. Beardsley to beg her influence with Beardsley to get on with the
+work. Mrs. Beardsley went upstairs at once to see Beardsley who
+was still in bed, and to remonstrate with him on Dent’s behalf.
+Beardsley, but half awake, lazily answered his mother’s chiding
+with:</p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">There was a young man with a salary</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Who had to do drawings for Malory;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">When they asked him for more, he replied “Why? Sure</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">You’ve enough, as it is, for a gallery.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>As Beardsley’s self chosen master, Watteau, had played with mimicry
+of the Chinese genius in his Chinoiseries, so Beardsley at twenty,
+faithful to Watteau, played with mimicry of the Japanese genius. And
+as Whistler had set the vogue in his Japanesques by adopting a Japanesque
+mark of a butterfly for signature, so Beardsley, not to be outdone
+in originality, now invented for himself his famous “Japanesque
+mark” of the three candles, with three flames—in the more elaborate
+later marks adding rounded puffs of candle-smoke—or as Beardsley
+himself called it, his “trademark.” To Beardsley his candles were as
+important a part of the tools of his craftsmanship as were his pen and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</span>
+paper and chinese ink; and it was but a fitting tribute to his light that
+he should make of it the emblem of his signature. But whether the
+“Japanesque mark” be candles or not, from the time he began to employ
+the Japanesque convention alongside of his mediævalism, for
+three years, until as we shall see he was expelled from <i>The Yellow
+Book</i>—his twentieth, twenty-first and twenty-second years—we shall
+find him employing the “Japanesque mark,” sometimes in addition
+to his name. So it is well to dwell upon it here.</p>
+
+<p>The early “Japanesque mark” of Beardsley’s twentieth year (mid
+1892 to mid-1893) was as we have seen, stunted, crude, and ill-shaped,
+and he employed it indifferently and incongruously on any
+type of his designs whether <i>Morte d’Arthur</i> mediævalism or the Japanesque
+grotesques of his <i>Bon Mots</i>. And we have seen that it was
+in the middle of his twentieth year—he last used it in fact in the February
+of 1893—that he dropped the initial V for Vincent out of his
+initials and signature. He had employed A. V. B. in his Formative
+years. He signs henceforth as A. B. or A. Beardsley or even as
+Aubrey B.</p>
+
+<p>In mid-1893, at twenty-one, we are about to see him launch upon
+his <i>Salome</i> designs, as weary of the <i>Bon Mots</i> grotesques as of the
+<i>Morte d’Arthur</i> mediævalism; and we shall see his “Japanesque
+mark” become long, slender, and graceful, often elaborate—the V
+quite departed from his signature.</p>
+
+<p>I have dwelt at length upon Beardsley’s “Japanesque mark,” or as
+he called it, his “trademark,” since his many forgers make the most
+amusing blunders by using the “Japanesque mark” in particular on
+forgeries of later styles when he had wholly abandoned it!</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/fig9.jpg" alt="sign">
+</div>
+
+<p>From mid-1892 to mid-1893, Beardsley then had advanced in craftsmanship
+by leaps and bounds, nevertheless he was unknown at
+twenty-one except to a small artistic circle. The <i>Bon Mots</i> grotesques,
+mostly done in the last half of 1892, began to appear, the first volume,
+<i>Sydney Smith and Sheridan</i>, in the April of 1893; the second volume
+at the year’s end, <i>Lamb and Douglas Jerrold</i>, in December 1893;
+and the third, the last volume, <i>Foote and Hooke</i>, in the February of
+1894. The <i>Morte d’Arthur</i> began to be published in parts in June
+1893. The feverish creation of the mediæval designs in the late part
+of 1892 alongside of the <i>Bon Mots</i> grotesques had exhausted Beardsley’s
+enthusiasm, and his style evaporated with the growth of his
+weariness—by mid-1893 he was finding the <i>Morte d’Arthur</i> “very
+long-winded.” And what chilled him most, he found the public indifferent
+to both—yet Beardsley knew full well that his whole interest
+lay in publicity.</p>
+
+<p>It has been complained against Beardsley that he broke his bond.
+This is a larger question and a serious question—but it <i>is</i> a question.
+It depends wholly on whether he could fulfil his bond artistically, as
+well as on whether that bond were a just bargain. We will come to
+that. But it must be stressed that just as Beardsley had rapidly developed
+his craftsmanship and style during his work upon the mediævalism
+of the <i>Morte d’Arthur</i>, by that time he came near to the end<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</span>
+of the book he had advanced quite beyond the style he had created
+for it; so also his next development was as rapid, and by the time he
+is at the end of his new Japanese phase in <i>Salome</i> we shall see
+him again advancing so rapidly to a newer development of his style
+that he grew weary of the <i>Salome</i> before he completed it, and threw
+in a couple of illustrations as makeweight which are utterly alien to the
+work and disfigure it. And yet these two drawings were made immediately
+after working upon this <i>Salome</i>, and were thrown in only out
+of a certain sense of resentment owing to the suppression of two designs
+not deemed to be circumspect enough. But Beardsley did not
+refuse to make new drawings in key with the rest—he had simply advanced
+to a new style quite alien to <i>Salome</i>, and he found he could not
+go back. This will be clearer when we come to the <i>Salome</i>.</p>
+
+<p>So precisely with the <i>Morte d’Arthur</i>; even the last decorations he
+made were more akin to his Greek Vase style in <i>The Yellow Book</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="gtb">******</p>
+
+<p>Before we leave the <i>Morte d’Arthur</i>, and the difficulties with Beardsley
+in which it ended, let us remember that artists and authors are
+often prone to ingratitude towards those who have led their steps to
+the ladder of Fame—and Beardsley was no exception. It was J. M.
+Dent who opened the gates for Beardsley to that realm which was to
+bring him the bays. Had it not been for Dent he would have died with
+his song wholly unsung—there would have been for him no <i>Studio</i>
+“réclame,” no <i>Yellow Book</i>, no <i>Salome</i>, no <i>Savoy</i>. Dent, employing
+with rare vision the budding genius of the youth, brought forth an
+edition of Sir Thomas Malory’s immortal <i>Morte d’Arthur</i> which is a
+triumph for English bookmaking—he gave us the supreme edition<span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</span>
+that can never be surpassed by mortal hands—he did so in a form
+within the reach of the ordinary man—and in the doing he made the
+much vaunted work of William Morris and his fellow-craftsmen appear
+second-rate, mechanical, and over-ornate toys for millionaires.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f10">
+<img src="images/fig10.jpg" alt="headpiece">
+<p class="caption">HEADPIECE FROM “LE MORTE D’ARTHUR”</p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f11">
+<img src="images/fig11.jpg" alt="skirt">
+<p class="caption">THE PEACOCK SKIRT</p>
+<p class="caption"><i>from “Salome”</i></p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="c6">VI</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="c large sp">THE JAPANESQUES</p>
+
+<p class="c">Mid-1893 to the New Year of 1894—Twenty-One</p>
+
+<p class="c less sp p1">“SALOME”</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap large">Entered</span> into the garden of his desire, by mid-1893 Beardsley was
+on the edge of manhood.</p>
+
+<p>We have seen that a year or two gone by, Beardsley is said to have
+paid a visit to Whistler’s notorious Peacock Room at Prince’s Gate.
+He really knew Japanese art in but its cheapest forms and in superficial
+fashion, and the bastard Japanesque designs for the decoration
+of this mock-Japanesque room greatly influenced Beardsley without
+much critical challenge from him, especially the tedious attenuated
+furniture and the thin square bars of the wooden fitments. They appear
+in his designs of interiors for some time after this. His Japanesque
+<i>Caricature of Whistler</i> on a seat, catching butterflies, is of this
+time.</p>
+
+<p>Now, the Letter to his musical friend Scotson Clark, describing
+his visit to Whistler’s Peacock Room, is evidently undated, but it is
+put down to the year of 1891. It may be so. But I suspect that it was
+of the early part of 1893—at any rate, if earlier, it is curious that its
+effect on Beardsley’s art lay in abeyance for a couple of years, and
+then suddenly, in the Spring and Summer of 1893, his art and craftsmanship
+burst forth in designs of the <i>Salome</i> founded frankly upon
+the convention of the superb peacocks on the shutters painted by<span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</span>
+Whistler for the Peacock Room. Why should this undisguised mimicry
+of Whistler have been delayed for two years?</p>
+
+<p>But—as the slyly hung indecent Japanese prints upon his walls at
+this time revealed to the seeing eye—it was now to the work of the
+better Japanese masters that he chiefly owed his passing pupillage to
+Japan. The erotic designs of the better Japanese artists, not being
+saleable for London drawing-rooms, were low-priced and within
+Beardsley’s reach. His own intellectual and moral eroticism was
+fiercely attracted by these erotic Japanese designs; indeed it was the
+sexualism of such Japanese masters that drew Beardsley to them quite
+as much as their wonderful rhythmic power to express sexual moods
+and adventures. It was from the time that Beardsley began to collect
+such Japanese prints by Utamaro and the rest that he gave rein to
+those leering features and libidinous ecstasies that became so dominating
+a factor of his Muse. These suggestive designs Beardsley himself
+used to call by the sophisticated title of “galants.” The Greek
+vase-paintings were to add to this lewd suggestiveness an increased
+power later on.</p>
+
+<p class="gtb">******</p>
+
+<p>It was a fortunate thing for Beardsley that Dent who had begun to
+publish the <i>Morte d’Arthur</i> in parts in the June of 1893, as it had
+called attention to his illustrations; for, Elkin Mathews and John
+Lane now commissioned the young fellow to decorate the Englished
+edition of Oscar Wilde’s <i>Salome</i>, translated by Lord Alfred Douglas.
+The young fellow leaped at it—not only as giving him scope for fantastic
+designs but even more from the belief that the critics hotly disputing
+over Wilde’s play already, he would come into the public eye.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</span>
+Elkin Mathews and John Lane showed remarkable judgment in their
+choice, founding their decision on the Japanesque drawing that
+Beardsley had made—either on reading the French edition, or on
+reading the widespread criticisms of the French editon by Wilde published
+in the February of 1893—illustrating the lines that raised so
+hot a controversy in the Press, “j’ai baisé ta bouche, Iokanaan; j’ai
+baisé ta bouche,” which as we have seen had appeared as one of the
+several illustrations to Pennell’s appreciation of “A New Illustrator”
+at the birth of <i>The Studio</i> in the April of 1893, soon thereafter.</p>
+
+<p>Beardsley flung himself at the work with eager enthusiasm, turning
+his back on all that he had done or undertaken to do. Whatever bitterness
+he may have felt at his disappointment with John Lane, a year
+before, was now mollified by the recognition of his art in the commission
+for <i>Salome</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Now, it should be realised that Elkin Mathews and John Lane, at
+the Sign of the Bodley Head in Vigo Street, were developing a publishing
+house quite unlike the ordinary publisher’s business of that
+day—they were encouraging the younger men or the less young who
+found scant support from the conventional makers of books; and they
+were bent on producing <i>belles lettres</i> in an attractive and picturesque
+form. This all greatly appealed to Beardsley. He was modern of the
+moderns. The heavy antique splendour and solemnities of the Kelmscott
+reprints repulsed him nearly as much as the crass philistinism
+of the hack publishers.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, Elkin Mathews and John Lane took Beardsley
+rather on trust—the <i>Morte d’Arthur</i> and the <i>Bon Mots</i> were far from
+what they sought. And again let us give them the credit of remembering
+that Beardsley was but little known.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</span></p>
+
+<p>It would be difficult to imagine a man less competent to create the
+true atmosphere of the times and court of King Herod than Oscar
+Wilde—but he could achieve an Oxford-Athenian fantasy hung on
+Herodias as a peg. It would be as difficult to imagine a man less competent
+than Aubrey Beardsley to paint the true atmosphere of the
+times of King Herod—but he knew it, and acted accordingly. What
+he could do, and did do, was to weave a series of fantastic decorations
+about Wilde’s play which were as delightfully alien to the subject
+as was the play. Beardsley imagined it as a Japanese fantasy, as a
+bright Cockney would conceive Japan; he placed his drama in the
+Japan of Whistler’s Peacock Room; he did not attempt to illustrate
+the play by scenes, indeed was not greatly interested in the play, any
+more than in the <i>Morte d’Arthur</i>, but was wholly concerned with
+creating decorative schemes as a musician might create impressions
+in sound as stirred in his imagination by the suggestion of moods in
+the play—and he proceeded to lampoon the writer of it and to make a
+sequence of grotesques that pronounced the eroticism of the whole
+conception. The Wardour-Street jumble-sale of Greek terminal gods,
+Japanese costumes, and all the rest of it, is part of the fun. Beardsley
+revels in the farce. But his beheaded John the Baptist is without a
+touch of tragic power.</p>
+
+<p>It was a habit of Beardsley’s champions, as well as an admission, if
+reluctantly granted, by his bitterest assailants, throughout the Press,
+to praise Beardsley’s line. What exactly they meant, most would have
+been hard put to it to explain—it was a sort of philistine literary or
+journalistic concession to the volapuk of the studios. As the fact of line
+is perhaps more obvious in the <i>Salome</i> drawings than in the <i>Savoy</i>,
+since the <i>Salome</i> designs are largely line unrelated to mass, there are<span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</span>
+even so-called critics to be found who place the <i>Salome</i> drawings at
+the topmost height of Beardsley’s achievement to this day!</p>
+
+<p>Most of this talk of Beardsley’s line was sheer literary cant, but
+happened to coincide with a reality. It is in the achievement of his line
+that Beardsley steps amongst the immortals, uttering his genius
+thereby. But the mere fact that any writer instances the <i>Salome</i> drawings
+in proof of the wonderful achievement of Beardsley’s line condemns
+him as a futile appraiser. Beardsley, by intense and dogged
+application and consummate taste, mastered the pen-line until this,
+the most mulish instrument of the artist’s craftsmanship, at last surrendered
+its secrets to him, lost its hard rigidity, and yielded itself to
+his hand’s desire; and he came to employ it with so exquisite a mastery
+that he could compel it at will to yield music like the clear sustained
+notes of a violin. His line became emotional—grave or gay.
+But he had not achieved that complete mastery when he undertook,
+nor when he completed, the <i>Salome</i>, wherein his line is yet hesitant,
+thin, trying to do too much, though there is music in it; but it is stolen
+music, and he cannot conjure with it as can the genius of Japan. Lived
+never yet a man who could surpass the thing he aped. There lies the
+self-dug grave of every academy. Set the <i>Salome</i> against the genius
+of Japan, and how small a thing it is! Something is lacking. It is not
+great music, it is full of reminiscences. It fails to capture the senses.
+It is “very clever for a young man.” In <i>Salome</i> he got all that he
+could from the Japanese genius, an alien tongue; and in <i>The Stomach
+Dance</i>, the finest as it is the only really grossly indecent drawing of
+the sequence, he thrust the mimicry of the Japanese line as far as he
+could take it. By the time he had completed the <i>Salome</i> he was done
+with the Japanese mimicry. At the Yuletide of 1893 and thereafter,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</span>
+he turned his back upon it. He had discovered that line alone has most
+serious limitations; it baulked him, its keen worshipper, as he increased
+in power. And as a matter of fact, it is in the coruscating originality
+of his invention, in the fertility of arrangement, and in the
+wide range of his flippant fantasy that the <i>Salome</i> designs reveal the
+increase of his powers as they reveal the widening range of his flight.
+He has near done with mimicry. He was weary of it, as he was weary
+of the limitations of the Japanese conventions, before he had completed
+the swiftly drawn designs with feverish eager address in those
+few weeks of the late autumn; and by the time he came to write Finis
+to the work with the designs for the Title Page and List of Contents,
+he was done with emptiness—the groundless earth, the floating figures
+in the air, the vague intersweep of figures and draperies, the reckless
+lack of perspective—all are gone. Thereafter he plants his figures
+on firm earth where foothold is secure, goes back a little way to his
+triumphs in the <i>Morte d’Arthur</i>, and trained by his two conflicting
+guidances, the Japanesque and the mediævalesque, he creates a line
+that is Beardsley’s own voice and hand—neither the hand of Esau nor
+the voice of Jacob. When Beardsley laid down the book of <i>Salome</i> he
+had completed it with a final decoration which opened the gates
+to self-expression. When Beardsley closed the book of <i>Salome</i> he had
+found himself. His last great splendid mimicry was done. And as
+though to show his delight in it he sat down and drew the exquisite
+<i>Burial of Salome</i> in a powder-box in the very spirit of the eighteenth
+century whose child he was.</p>
+
+<p><i>Salome</i> finished, however, was not <i>Salome</i> published. Elkin Mathews
+and John Lane realised that the drawings could not appear
+without certain mitigations, though, as a matter of fact, there were<span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</span>
+but two gross indecencies in them. Both men were anxious to achieve
+public recognition for the gifted young fellow, and they knew him to
+be “difficult.” However, Gleeson White was consulted and he consulted
+me amongst others as an outside and independent opinion.
+Being greatly pleased by the suggestions that I made, Gleeson White
+put them forward, and told me they were warmly welcomed by the
+two troubled men who would have had to bear the brunt of the obloquy
+for any mistake or indiscretion. It was agreed to the satisfaction
+of all concerned that Beardsley should not touch the originals but
+should make alterations on the few offending proofs and that new
+blocks should then be made from the altered proofs, which, when all
+is said, required but little done to them, thereby preserving the original
+drawings intact. Thus the publication would offend no one’s sense
+of decorum—however much they might exasperate the taste. Odd to
+say, one or two ridiculously puritanical alterations were made whilst
+more offensive things were passed by! By consequence, the <i>Title
+Page</i>, and <i>Enter Herodias</i> were slightly altered simply to avoid offence
+to public taste; but I was astonished to find, on publication, that of
+the only two drawings that were deliberately and grossly obscene, <i>The
+Stomach Dance</i> appeared without change—was accepted without demur
+by the public and in silence by the censorious—indeed the lasciviousness
+of the musician seems to have offended nobody’s eye;
+while the <i>Toilette of Salome</i>, a fine design, which only required a very
+slight correction, had been completely withdrawn with the quite innocent
+but very second-rate design of <i>John and Salome</i>, and in place of
+the two had been inserted the wretched <i>Black Cape</i> and Georgian
+<i>Toilette</i> which were not only utterly out of place in the book but tore
+the fabric of the whole design to pieces, and displayed in Beardsley a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</span>
+strain of inartistic mentality and vulgarity whereby he was prepared
+to sacrifice a remarkable achievement to a fit of stupid spleen and
+cheap conceit—for it was at once clear that he resented any attempt to
+prevent his offending the public sense of decency even though his
+supporters might suffer thereby. Now, whether the public were canting
+or not, whether they were correct or not, Beardsley would not have
+been the chief sufferer by his committing flagrant indecencies in the
+public thoroughfare, and some of the drawings were deliberately indecent.
+The public were canting in many ways; but they were also
+long-suffering, and Beardsley’s literary advisers were solely concerned
+with the young fellow’s interests. Besides vice has its cant as well as
+virtue. In any case, the mediocre <i>Black Cape</i> and the better Georgian
+<i>Toilette</i>, quite apart from their intrinsic merit in themselves as drawings,
+were an act of that utter bourgeois philistinism which the young
+fellow so greatly affected to despise, committed by himself alone. He
+who will thus fling stones at his own dignity has scant ground on
+which to complain of stone-throwing by the crowd.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f12">
+<img src="images/fig12.jpg" alt="dance">
+<p class="caption">THE STOMACH DANCE</p>
+<p class="caption"><i>from “Salome”</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The interpolated <i>Black Cape</i> and the <i>Second Toilette</i> we may here
+dismiss as having nothing to do with the case; and what is more, they
+are wholly outside the <i>Salome</i> atmosphere. Of the pure <i>Salome</i> designs,
+incomparably the finest are <i>The Stomach Dance</i> and the <i>Peacock
+Skirt</i>. Yet, so faulty was Beardsley’s own taste at times, that he
+considered the best drawings to be <i>The Man in the Moon</i>, the <i>Peacock
+Skirt</i>, and <i>The Dancer’s Reward</i>—it should be noted by the way
+that Beardsley showed by his <i>Book of Fifty Drawings</i> that his title was
+<i>The Man in the Moon</i> not as the publishers have it, <i>The Woman in
+the Moon</i>. But it is in <i>The Climax</i>, one of the less noteworthy designs,
+that we discover Beardsley’s forward stride—for though the lower
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</span>half is so wretchedly done that it scarce seems to be by the same hand
+as the upper half, the purification of the line as compared with the
+fussy, fidgety futilities and meaninglessness of his flourishes and
+“hairy line” in the same subject, and practically of the same design,
+drawn but a year before and shown in <i>The Studio</i> first number, make
+us realise not only how rapidly he is advancing towards ease and
+clearness of handling, but it also makes us sympathise with the young
+fellow’s bitter distaste to carrying on a sequence of designs in a craftsmanship
+which he has utterly outgrown.</p>
+
+<p>We now come to the act for which Beardsley has been very severely
+censured. But it is rather a question whether the boot should not be
+on the other foot. It is not quite so simple a matter as it looks to the
+lay mind for an artist to fulfil a long contract which at the time of his
+making it he enthusiastically cherishes and fully intends to carry out.
+A work of art is not a manufactured article that can be produced indefinitely
+to a pattern. It is natural that a business-man should blame
+Beardsley for shrinking from completing a large sequence of designs,
+covering a long artistic development, to illustrate a book. Yet it is
+only just to recognise that it fretted the young fellow that he could
+not do it, and that it requires a frantic and maddening effort of will
+in any artist to keep going back and employing an utterance that he
+has left behind him and rejected, having advanced to such a handling
+as <i>The Neophyte</i>. It is like asking a man to put the enthusiasm and
+intensity of a struggle for victory into an endeavour after he has won
+the victory. However let us consider the exact position. First of all,
+were the very low prices paid to Beardsley a living wage?</p>
+
+<p>Beardsley may have been more torn between his honour as a good
+citizen and his honour as a great artist than he was likely to have been<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</span>
+given the credit for having been; but he had to choose, willy-nilly,
+between his commercial honour and the fulfilling of his genius. A
+choice was compelled upon him, owing to the hardship that his poverty
+thrust upon him, in having accepted long contracts—or rather
+contracts that took time to fulfil. Before blaming Beardsley for not
+fulfilling his commercial obligations, it is only just to ask whether he
+could have fulfilled them even had he desired so to do. Was it possible
+for him, passing swiftly into a rapid sequence of artistic developments,
+to step back into a craftsmanship which he had outgrown
+as a game is restarted at the whistle of a referee? Once the voice of the
+youth breaks, can the deep accents of the man recover the treble of
+the boy? If not, then could the work of his new craftsmanship have
+been put alongside of the old without mutual antagonisms or hopeless
+incongruity? Could the <i>Salome</i> drawings for instance have appeared
+in the <i>Morte d’Arthur</i>? But one thing is certain: Beardsley’s art and
+genius and his high achievement would have suffered—and Death
+was beckoning to him not to tarry. Either the commercial advantage
+of his publishers or the artistic achievement of his genius had to go.
+Which ought to go? Put it in another way: which is the greater good
+to the world, the achievement of genius or the fulfilment of the commercial
+contract of genius to the letter for the profit of the trade of
+one man? If instead of creating a great art, Beardsley had what is
+called “got religion” and gone forth to benefit mankind instead of
+completing his worldly duties by doing a given number of drawings
+for a book, would he deserve censure? Of the 544 or so decorations for
+the <i>Morte d’Arthur</i>, several are repeated—some more than once. Let
+us take 400 as a rough estimate, just for argument. Calculating<span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</span>
+roughly that he made 400 drawings for the <i>Morte d’Arthur</i>, did he
+get a living wage for them? Did he get a bare subsistence, say of a
+guinea a drawing? Supposing he got £100 for them, then he would
+be working at something like five shillings a drawing! Two hundred
+pounds would be ten shillings a drawing; £300 would be fifteen shillings.
+His bank-book alone can reveal to us what he earned. But supposing
+he did not get a living wage! The law will not permit an usurer
+to charge even a scapegrace waster more than a certain usury. If so,
+then it is not lawful or moral to contract with an artist to work for a
+beggar’s wage. We cannot judge Beardsley until we know the whole
+truth. The quality of mercy is not strained. His “pound of flesh” may
+be an abomination to demand. It is not enough to hold up self-righteous
+hands in protestation, Shylock-wise, that he refused to pay
+his pound of flesh....</p>
+
+<p>Even before Beardsley was done with <i>Salome</i>, he had exhausted
+the Japanesque formula of line. The play completed, the feverish
+brain has to evolve a <i>Title-page</i>, a <i>List of Contents</i>, and a <i>Finis</i>; and
+we have seen him playing in a new key. Closing the book of <i>Salome</i>,
+weary of the Japanesque, having got from it all that it would yield his
+restless spirit, he turns away, and picking up the rich blacks of his
+<i>Morte d’Arthur</i> designs again, he was about to burst into a new song
+as hinted at by the last three designs for <i>Salome</i>. An artist is finding
+himself. Beardsley is on the threshold of a new utterance.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f13">
+<img src="images/fig13.jpg" alt="title">
+<p class="caption">TITLE PAGE OF “SALOME”</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>About the end of October or early in the November of 1893, Beardsley
+wrote to his old school that he had just signed a contract for a
+new book, to consist of his own drawings only, “without any letterpress,”
+which was probably a slight misunderstanding of what Beardsley
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</span>said: that he was to make drawings with no relation to the letterpress
+in a new venture about to appear. For <i>The Yellow Book</i> is the
+only contract that emerges out of this time.</p>
+
+<p>It is known that Henry Harland and Aubrey Beardsley were about
+this time, planning a magazine wherein to publish their wares; and
+that they took their scheme to John Lane.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst at work on the <i>Salome</i>, Beardsley began the long series of
+decorative covers, with the fanciful “keys,” on the reverse back, forming
+the initials of the author of each volume, which Elkin Mathews
+and John Lane began to issue from The Bodley Head in Vigo Street
+as <i>The Keynote Series</i> of novels, published on the heels of the wide
+success of <i>Keynotes</i> by George Egerton in the midst of the feminist
+stir and the first notoriety of the “sex novel” of this time.</p>
+
+<p>And it was in 1893 that Beardsley was elected to the New English
+Art Club.</p>
+
+<p>Beardsley was beginning to feel his feet. His circle amongst artists
+and art-lovers was rapidly increasing. Suddenly a legacy to the brother
+and sister from their Aunt in Brighton, with whom they had lived after
+their own family came to London, decided the young fellow and his
+sister to set up house for themselves and to flit from the parental roof.
+About the end of the year, or the New Year of 1894, they bought their
+little home—a house in Pimlico at 114 Cambridge Street.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f14">
+<img src="images/fig14.jpg" alt="yellow">
+<p class="caption">COVER DESIGN FOR “THE YELLOW BOOK” VOLUME III</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="c7">VII</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="c large sp">THE GREEK VASE PHASE</p>
+
+<p class="c">New Year of 1894 to Mid-1895—Twenty-One to Twenty-Three</p>
+
+<p class="c less sp p1">“THE YELLOW BOOK”</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap large">It</span> was near the New Year of 1894 that Aubrey Beardsley and his
+sister Mabel Beardsley moved into the young fellow’s second Pimlico
+home in London, at 114 Cambridge Street, Warwick Square, which
+Vallance decorated for him with orange walls and black woodwork,
+with its much talked-of black and orange studio. How dull and stale
+it all sounds today!</p>
+
+<p>Here Beardsley made his bid for a place in the social life of London.
+Every Thursday afternoon he and his sister, and generally his
+mother, were “At Home” to visitors. Beardsley, dressed with scrupulous
+care to be in the severest good taste and fashion, delighted to play
+the host—and an excellent host he was. All his charming qualities
+were seen at their best. The lanky, rather awkward, angular young
+man, pallid of countenance, stooped and meagre of body, with his
+“tortoise-shell coloured hair” worn in a smooth fringe over his white
+forehead, was the life and soul of his little gatherings. He paid for it
+with “a bad night” always when the guests were departed.</p>
+
+<p>Beardsley greatly liked his walls decorated with the stripes running
+from ceiling to floor in the manner he so much affects for the designs
+of his interiors such as the famous drawing of the lady standing at her
+dressing-table known as <i>La Dame aux Camélias</i>. The couch in his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</span>
+studio bore sad evidence to the fact that he had to spend all too much
+of his all too short life lying upon it.</p>
+
+<p class="gtb">******</p>
+
+<p>When Beardsley began the <i>Salome</i> drawings at twenty-one he was,
+as we have seen, greatly interested in the erotic works of the Japanese
+masters; and this eroticism dominated his art quite as much as did
+the craftsmanship of the Japanese in line, whilst the lechery of his
+faces was distinctly suggested by the sombre, the macabre, and the
+grotesque features so much affected by the Japanese masters. Whilst
+at work upon the <i>Salome</i> designs he was much at the British Museum
+and was intensely drawn to the Greek vase-paintings in which the
+British Museum is very rich. Now not only did the austere artistry
+of the Greeks in their line and mass fascinate Beardsley—not only was
+he struck by the rhythm and range of mood, tragic, comic, and satirical,
+uttered by the Greeks, but here again was that factor in the Greek
+genius which appealed to Beardsley’s intense eroticism. The more
+obscene of the Greek vase-painters are naturally turned away from the
+public eye towards the wall, indeed some of them ’tis said, have been
+“purified” by prudish philistinism painting out certain “naughtinesses”;
+but it was precisely the skill with which the great Greek
+painters uttered erotic moods by the rhythmic use of line and mass
+that most keenly intrigued Beardsley. The violences of horrible lecherous
+old satyrs upon frail nymphs, painted by such Greek masters as
+Brygos and Duris, appealed to the morbid and grotesque mind and
+mood of Beardsley as they had tickled the Greeks aforetime. He had
+scarce finished his <i>Salome</i> drawings under the Japanese erotic influence
+before the Greek satyr peeps in; Beardsley straightway flung
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</span>away the Japanesque, left it behind him, and boldly entered into rivalry
+with the Greeks. It was to make him famous.</p>
+
+<p class="gtb">******</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f15">
+<img src="images/fig15.jpg" alt="dame">
+<p class="caption">LA DAME AUX CAMÉLIAS</p>
+<p class="caption"><i>from “The Yellow Book,” Volume III</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>On the 15th of April 1894 appeared <i>The Yellow Book</i>. It made
+Beardsley notorious.</p>
+
+<p>In the February of 1894 Salome had been published cheek by jowl
+with the 3rd, the last, volume of <i>Bon Mots</i>; and <i>Morte d’Arthur</i> was
+in full career. It is a common fallacy amongst writers to say that <i>Salome</i>
+made Beardsley famous. <i>Salome</i> was an expensive book, published
+in a very limited edition. Except in a small but ever-increasing
+literary and artistic set, the <i>Morte d’Arthur</i> and <i>Salome</i> passed quite
+unrecognised and unknown. But <i>Salome</i> did lead to an act which was
+to make Beardsley leap at a bound into the public eye.</p>
+
+<p>Elkin Mathews and John Lane were inspired with the idea of publishing
+a handsome little quarterly, bound as a book, which should
+gather together the quite remarkable group of young writers and artists
+that had arisen in London, akin to and in part largely created by
+the so-called Decadent group in Paris. This is not the place to describe
+or pursue the origins and rise of the French “Decadents.” The idea
+of <i>The Yellow Book</i> developed from a scheme of Beardsley’s who was
+rich in schemes and dreams rarely realised or even begun, whereby
+he was to make a book of drawings without any letterpress whatsoever,
+of a sort of pictorial Comedy Ballet of Marionettes—to answer
+in the pictorial realm of Balzac’s Prose Comedy of life; but it does not
+seem to have fired a publisher. <i>The Yellow Book</i> quarterly, however,
+was a very different affair, bringing together, as it did, the scattered
+art of the younger men. It inevitably drew into its orbit, as Beardsley
+dreaded it would, self-advertising mediocrities more than one. It was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</span>
+decided to make Harland with his French literary sympathies the literary
+editor, Beardsley to be the art editor. John Lane has borne witness
+to the fact that one morning Beardsley with Henry Harland and
+himself, “during half an hour’s chat over our cigarettes at the Hogarth
+Club, founded the much discussed <i>Yellow Book</i>.” This
+quarterly, to be called <i>The Yellow Book</i> after the conventional name
+of a “yellow back” for a French novel, was to be a complete book in
+itself in each number—not only was it to be rid of the serial or sequence
+idea of a magazine, but the art and the literature were to have
+no dependence the one on the other.</p>
+
+<p>Beardsley, feverishly as he had addressed himself to the <i>Salome</i>,
+as we have seen, had no sooner made the drawings than he wearied
+of them and sought for new worlds to conquer. It was about the New
+Year of 1894, the <i>Salome</i> off his hands, that <i>The Yellow Book</i> was
+planned in detail, and Beardsley flung himself into the scheme with
+renewed fiery ardour. The idea suited him better than any yet held
+out to him for the expression of his individual genius; and his hand’s
+craft was beginning to find personal expression. His mimicries and
+self-schooling were near at an end. He flung the Japanesques of the
+<i>Salome</i> into the wastepaper basket of his career with as fine a sigh of
+relief as he had aforetime flung aside the <i>Morte d’Arthur</i> Kelmscott
+mediævalism. And he now gave utterance to the life of the day as he
+saw it—through books—and he created a decorative craftsmanship
+wherewith to do it, compact of his intensely suggestive nervous and
+musical line in collusion with flat black masses, just as he saw that the
+Greeks had done—employing line and mass like treble and bass to
+each other’s fulfilment and enhancement. His apprenticeship to firm
+line and solid blacks in the <i>Morte d’Arthur</i> now served him to splendid<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</span>
+purpose. He was taking subjects that would tickle or exasperate
+the man-in-the-street, who was cold about the doings of the Court of
+Herod and indifferent to Japan and The Knights of the Round Table.
+Interested in the erotic side of social life, he naturally found his subjects
+in the half-world—he took the blatant side of “life” as it was
+lived under the flare of the electric lights of Piccadilly Circus, and the
+cafés thereabouts; its powdered and painted and patchouli “romance”
+amused him more than the solid and more healthy life of his day into
+which he had little insight, and for which he had rather a contempt as
+judged from his own set as being “middle-class” and unromantic. He
+scorned his own class. But he had the right as artist to utter any emotional
+experience whatsoever, the erotic as much as anything else—but
+we are coming to that.</p>
+
+<p>It was about this New Year of 1894 that the extraordinary German,
+Reichardt, who had made a huge success of his humorous and artistic
+weekly, <i>Pick-Me-Up</i>, in rivalry with Punch, planned the issue of a
+monthly magazine which had as its secret aim, if successful, that it
+should become a weekly illustrated paper to “smash the <i>Graphic</i> and
+<i>Illustrated London News</i>.” Struck by some article attacking the art
+critics written by me, he called me to the writing of the weekly review
+of Art Matters in this paper which was to be called <i>St. Paul’s</i>. Although
+at this time Beardsley was almost unknown to the general
+public, I suggested that the young artist should be given an opening
+for decorative work; and he was at once commissioned to make some
+drawings, to illustrate the Signs of the Zodiac—(remember, <i>St. Paul’s</i>
+was to begin as a monthly!)—and to illustrate the subjects to which
+each page was to be devoted such as Music, Art, Books, Fashions, The
+Drama, and the rest of it. He drew the “<i>Man that holds the Water</i><span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</span>
+<i>Pot</i>” and the “<i>Music</i>,” but the paper did not appear in January—indeed
+not until March. Beardsley then became bored, and fobbed
+off the paper with a couple of drawings that were probably meant for
+Dent’s <i>Bon Mots</i>—however they may have been intended for <i>The
+Fashions</i> and <i>The Drama</i> pages of <i>St. Paul’s</i>. He made in all four
+which were to be used as headings and tail pieces. They did not
+greatly encourage Reichardt, who shrugged his shoulders and said
+that I “might have the lot.” They have never reached me! They have
+this value, however, that they reveal Beardsley’s craftsmanship at the
+New Year of 1894—they show him ridding himself of the “hairy
+line,” with a marked increase of power over line—they end his <i>Salome</i>
+Japanesque phase.</p>
+
+<p>It is somewhat curious that, whilst <i>The Man that holds the Water
+Pot</i> is always printed awry in the collections of Beardsley’s works, the
+fourth drawing he made for <i>St. Paul’s</i> seems to have been missed by
+all iconographists, and I now probably possess the only known print
+of it!</p>
+
+<p>Before we leave <i>St. Paul’s</i>, it is interesting to note that at this time
+the line and decorative power of Beardsley’s work were rivalled by
+the beauty, quality, richness, and decorative rhythm of the ornamental
+headings which Edgar Wilson was designing for <i>St. Paul’s</i> and other
+papers.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f16">
+<img src="images/fig16.jpg" alt="messalina">
+<p class="caption">MESSALINA</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>It was in the March of 1894 that Beardsley drew the <i>Poster for the
+Avenue Theatre</i> which really brought him before a London public
+more than anything he had so far done—a success, be it confessed,
+more due to the wide interest aroused by the dramatic venture of the
+Avenue Theatre than to any inherent value in the Poster itself which
+could not be compared with the work of the Beggarstaff Brothers.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</span>
+Needless to say that it was at this same time that George Bernard Shaw
+was to float into the public ken with his play of <i>Arms and the Man</i>
+at this same Avenue Theatre, hitherto so unlucky a play-house
+that from its situation on the Embankment under Charing Cross
+Bridge, it was cynically known to the wags as “The Home for Lost
+Seagulls.” I shall always associate Beardsley’s Avenue Theatre poster
+with Shaw’s rise to fame as it recalls Shaw’s first night when, being
+called before the curtain at the end of <i>Arms and the Man</i>, some man
+amongst the gods booing loud and long amidst the cheering, Shaw’s
+ready Irish wit brought down the house as, gazing upwards into the
+darkness, his lank loose figure waited patiently until complete silence
+had fallen on the place, when he said dryly in his rich brogue: “I
+agree with that gentleman in the gallery, but”—shrugging his shoulders—“what
+are we amongst so many?”</p>
+
+<p>Beardsley’s decorations for John Davidson’s <i>Plays</i> appeared about
+the April of this year; but, needless to say, did not catch the interest
+of a wide public.</p>
+
+<p class="gtb">******</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly his hour struck for Aubrey Beardsley.</p>
+
+<p>It was the publication of <i>The Yellow Book</i> in the mid-April of 1894
+that at once thrust Beardsley into the public eye and beyond the narrow
+circle so far interested in him.</p>
+
+<p>London Society was intensely literary and artistic in its interests,
+or at any rate its pose, in the early ’nineties. Every lady’s drawing-room
+was sprinkled with the latest books—the well-to-do bought
+pictures and wrangled over art. The leaders of Society prided themselves
+on their literary and artistic salons. As a snowfall turns London
+white in a night, so <i>The Yellow Book</i> littered the London drawing-rooms<span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</span>
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">with gorgeous mustard as at the stroke of a magician’s wand.</span><br>
+It “caught on.” And catching on, it carried Aubrey Beardsley on the
+crest of its wave of notoriety into a widespread and sudden vogue.
+After all, everything that was outstanding and remarkable about the
+book was Beardsley. <i>The Yellow Book</i> was soon the talk of the town,
+and Beardsley “awoke to find himself famous.” Punch promptly caricatured
+his work; and soon he was himself caricatured by “Max” in
+the <i>Pall Mall Budget</i>; whilst the Oxford undergraduates were playing
+with Wierdsley Daubrey and the like. But it was left to Mostyn
+Piggott to write perhaps the finest burlesque on any poem in our
+tongue in the famous skit which ran somewhat thus:</p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">’Twas rollog; and the minim potes</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Did mime and mimble in the cafe;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">All footly were the Philerotes</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">And Daycadongs outstrafe....</div>
+  </div><div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">Beware the Yellow Bock, my son!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">The aims that rile, the art that racks,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Beware the Aub-Aub Bird, and shun</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">The stumious Beerbomax!</div>
+  </div><div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * </div>
+  </div><div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">Then, as veep Vigo’s marge he trod,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">The Yallerbock, with tongue of blue,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Came piffling through the Headley Bod,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">And flippered as it flew....</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f17">
+<img src="images/fig17.jpg" alt="portrait">
+<p class="caption">PORTRAIT OF HIMSELF</p>
+<p class="caption"><i>from “The Yellow Book” Volume III</i></p>
+<p class="caption">PAR LES DIEVX<br>
+JVMEAVX TOVS<br>
+LES MONSTRES<br>
+NE SONT PAS EN<br>
+AFRIQUE</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>As one turns over the pages of <i>The Yellow Book</i> today, it is a little
+difficult to recall the sensation it made at its birth. Indeed, London’s<span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</span>
+passions and whims, grown stale, are fantastic weeds in the sear and
+yellow leaf. But it <i>was</i> a sensation. And that sensation flung wide the
+doors of Society to Aubrey Beardsley. He enjoyed his fame with gusto.
+He revelled in it. And the ineffable and offensive conceit that it engendered
+in the lad was very excusable and understandable. He was
+lionised on every hand. He appeared everywhere and enjoyed every
+ray of the sun that shone upon him. And the good fortune that his
+fairy godmother granted to him in all his endeavours, was enhanced
+by an increase of health and strength that promised recovery from
+the hideous threat that had dogged his sleeping and waking. His musical
+childhood had taught him the value of publicity early—the
+whole of his youth had seen him pursuing it by every means and at
+every opportunity. When fame came to him he was proud of it and
+loved to bask in its radiance. At times he questioned it; and sometimes
+he even felt a little ashamed of it—and of his Jackals. But his vogue
+now took him to the “domino room” of the Café Royal as a Somebody—and
+he gloried in the hectic splendour of not having to be explained.</p>
+
+<p>It was now roses, roses all the way for Aubrey Beardsley; yet even
+at the publishing of the second volume of <i>The Yellow Book</i> in July
+there was that which happened—had he had prophetic vision—that
+boded no good for the young fellow.</p>
+
+<p>The deed of partnership between Elkin Mathews and John Lane
+fell in, and Elkin Mathews withdrew from the firm, leaving John Lane
+in sole possession of The Bodley Head—and <i>The Yellow Book</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The parting of Elkin Mathews and John Lane seemed to bring to a
+head considerable feeling amongst the group of writers collected
+about The Bodley Head; this was to bear bitter fruit for Beardsley before
+a twelvemonth was out.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</span></p>
+
+<p>It was on the designs of this second volume of <i>The Yellow Book</i> of
+July 1894 that Beardsley signed his “Japanesque mark” for the last
+time. Indeed these signed designs were probably done before June;
+for, in the <i>Invitation Card for the Opening of the Prince’s Ladies Golf
+Club</i> on Saturday June 16th 1894, the “Japanesque mark” has given
+place to “<span class="allsmcap">AUBREY BEARDSLEY</span>.”</p>
+
+<p>Beardsley was to be seen everywhere. People wondered when he
+did his work. He flitted everywhere enjoying his every hour, as though
+he had no need to work—were above work. He liked to pose as one
+who did not need to work for a livelihood. As each number of the
+quarterly appeared, he won an increase of notoriety—or obloquy,
+which was much the same thing to Aubrey Beardsley; but as the winter
+came on, he was to have a dose of obloquy of a kind that he did
+not relish, indeed that scared him—and as a fact, it was most scandalously
+unfair gossip. Meanwhile the Christmas number of <i>Today</i>
+produced his very fine night-piece <i>Les Passades</i>.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f18">
+<img src="images/fig18.jpg" alt="night">
+<p class="caption">NIGHT PIECE</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Oscar Wilde was at the height of his vogue—as playwright and wit
+and man of letters. Beardsley’s artistic share in the <i>Salome</i>, with its
+erotic atmosphere and its strange spirit of evil, gave the public a false
+impression that Beardsley and Wilde were intimates. They never were.
+Curiously enough, the young fellow was no particular admirer of
+Wilde’s art. And Wilde’s conceited remark that he had “invented
+Beardsley” deeply offended the other. To cap it all, Beardsley delighted
+in the bohemian atmosphere and the rococo surrounding of
+what was known as the Domino Room at the Café Royal, and it so
+happened that Wilde had also elected to make the Café Royal his
+Court, where young talent was allowed to be brought into the presence
+and introduced. It came into the crass mind of one of Wilde’s satellites<span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</span>
+to go over to a table at which Beardsley was sitting, revelling in
+hero-worship, and to lead the young fellow into the presence, as
+Wilde had signified his condescension to that end—but the gross
+patronage of Wilde on the occasion wounded the young fellow’s conceit
+to the quick. It had flattered Beardsley to be seen with Wilde;
+but he never became an intimate—he never again sought to bask in
+the radiance.</p>
+
+<p>To add to Beardsley’s discomfort, there fell like bolt from the blue
+a novel called <i>The Green Carnation</i> of which Wilde and his associates
+were the obvious originals. The book left little to the imagination.
+The Marquis of Queensberry, owing to his son Lord Alfred Douglas’s
+intimacy with Wilde, was only too eager to strike Wilde down. Even
+if Queensberry had been inclined to hang back he could not very well
+in common decency have allowed the imputations of the book to pass
+by him without taking action. But he welcomed the scandal. He
+sprang at opportunity—and struck hard. With the reckless courage
+so characteristic of him, Queensberry took serious risks, but he struck—and
+he knew that the whole sporting world, of which he was a
+leader, would be behind him, as he knew full well that the whole of
+the healthy-minded majority of the nation would be solid in support
+of his vigorous effort to cut the canker out of society which was threatening
+public life under Wilde’s cynical gospel that the world had arrived
+at a state of elegant decay.</p>
+
+<p>Queensberry publicly denounced Wilde and committed acts which
+brought Wilde into public disrepute. There was nothing left to Wilde
+but to bring a charge of criminal libel against him or become a social
+pariah. On the 2nd of March 1895 Queensberry was arrested and
+charged at Marlbourgh Street; on the 9th he was committed for trial;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</span>
+and on the 3rd of April he was tried at the Old Bailey amidst an extraordinary
+public excitement. He was acquitted on the 5th of April
+amidst the wild enthusiasm of the people. Oscar Wilde was arrested
+the same evening.</p>
+
+<p>On the 6th of April, Wilde, with Taylor, was charged at Bow
+Street with a loathsome offence; public interest was at fever pitch
+during the fortnight that followed, when, on the 19th of April Wilde
+and Taylor were committed for trial, bail being refused. A week later,
+on the 26th, the trial of Wilde and Taylor began at the Old Bailey.
+After a case full of sensations, on the 1st of May, the jury disagreed
+and the prisoners were remanded for a fresh trial, bail being again
+refused. A week later, on the 7th of May, Wilde was released on bail
+for £5,000; and it was decided to try the two men separately. Taylor
+was put on trial at the Old Bailey for the second time, alone, on May
+the 20th, and the next day was found “guilty,” sentence being postponed.
+The following day, the 22nd, the second trial of Wilde began
+at the Old Bailey, and on the 25th of May he also was found “guilty,”
+and with Taylor was sentenced to two years imprisonment with hard
+labour.</p>
+
+<p>The popular excitement over this trial of Wilde reached fever heat.
+The fall of Wilde shook society; and gossip charged many men of
+mark with like vices. Scandal wagged a reckless tongue. A very general
+scare set in, which had a healthy effect in many directions; but
+it also caused a vast timidity in places where blatant effrontery had a
+short while before been in truculent vogue....</p>
+
+<p>John Lane, now at The Bodley Head alone, had published volume
+III of <i>The Yellow Book</i> in October 1894 and volume IV in the January
+of 1895. Beardsley had made the drawings for the April number,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</span>
+volume V; the blocks were also made, and a copy or so of the number
+bound, when, at the beginning of March, Queensberry’s arrest shook
+society. The public misapprehension about Beardsley being a friend
+of Oscar Wilde’s probably caused some consternation amongst the
+writers of <i>The Yellow Book</i>; but whatever the cause, John Lane who
+was in America was suddenly faced with an ultimatum—it was said
+that one of his chief poets put the pistol to his head and threatened
+that without further ado either he or Beardsley must leave <i>The Yellow
+Book</i> at once. Now this cable announced that William Watson was not
+alone but had the alliance of Alice Meynell, then at the height of her
+vogue, with others most prominent in this movement. Into the merits
+of the storm in the teacup we need not here go. What decided John
+Lane in his awkward plight to sacrifice Beardsley rather than the poet
+was a personal matter, solely for John Lane to decide as suited his own
+business interest best. He decided to jettison Beardsley. The decision
+could have had little to do with anything objectionable in Beardsley’s
+drawings, for a copy was bound with Beardsley’s designs complete,
+and anything more innocent of offence it would be difficult to imagine.
+It may therefore be safely assumed that the revolt on John Lane’s ship
+was solely due to the panic set up by the Wilde trial, resulting in a
+most unjust prejudice against Beardsley as being in some way sympathetic
+in moral with the abhorred thing. No man knows such gusts
+of moral cowardice as the moralist. However, in expelling Beardsley
+<i>The Yellow Book</i> was doomed—it at once declined, and though it
+struggled on, it went to annihilation and foundered.</p>
+
+<p>This ultimatum by cable to John Lane in America was a piece of
+cant that Lane felt as bitterly as the victim Beardsley. It grieved John
+Lane to his dying day, and he blamed himself for lack of courage in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</span>
+deserting the young fellow; but he was hustled, and he feared that it
+might wreck the publishing house which he had built up at such infinite
+pains. Above all he knew that Beardsley would never forgive
+him. But Lane blamed himself quite needlessly, as in all this ugly
+incident, in that he had shown lack of personal dignity in allowing
+himself to be thrust aside from captaincy of his own ship whilst he had
+been made responsible for the act of his mutineers which he had
+whole-heartedly detested. Lane would not be comforted. He never
+ceased to blame himself.</p>
+
+<p>His expulsion from <i>The Yellow Book</i> was very bitterly resented by
+Beardsley. It hurt his pride and it humiliated him at the height of his
+triumph. And he writhed at the injustice inflicted upon him by the
+time selected to strike at him, besmirching him as it did with an association
+of which he was wholly innocent. And it must be confessed
+that <i>The Yellow Book</i> at once became a stale farce played by all concerned
+except the hero, from the leading lady to the scene-shifter—<i>Hamlet</i>
+being attempted without the Prince of Denmark.</p>
+
+<p>The trial and conviction of Oscar Wilde shook the young fellow
+even more thoroughly. Quite apart from the fierce feeling of resentment
+at the injustice of his being publicly made to suffer as though an
+intimate of a man in disgrace for whom he had no particular liking,
+Beardsley realised that his own flippant and cheaply cynical attitude
+towards society might, like Wilde’s, have to be paid for at a hideous
+price. The whole ugly business filled him with disgust; and what at
+least was to the good, the example of Wilde’s crass conceit humbled
+in the dust, knocked much of the cheap conceit out of Beardsley, to
+his very great advantage, for it allowed freer play to that considerable
+personal charm that he possessed in no small degree.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f19">
+<img src="images/fig19.jpg" alt="campbell">
+<p class="caption">PORTRAIT OF MRS. PATRICK CAMPBELL</p>
+<p class="caption"><i>from “The Yellow Book,” Volume I</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</span></p>
+
+<p>His expulsion from <i>The Yellow Book</i> placed Beardsley in a very
+awkward financial position. The income that he derived from his
+drawings for <i>The Yellow Book</i> must have been but small at best; and
+it is a mystery how he lived. It has been said that he found generous
+patrons, and that of these not the least generous was one André Raffalovich,
+a man of wealth. But the sources of his means of livelihood
+must have been dangerously staunched by his expulsion from <i>The
+Yellow Book</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The strange part of Beardsley’s career is that the designs for volume
+V of <i>The Yellow Book</i>, printed for April, but suppressed at the
+last moment, ended his achievement in this phase and style and craftsmanship.
+When the blow fell, he was already embarking upon a new
+craftsmanship; indeed towards this development he markedly moves
+in the later <i>Yellow Book</i> designs. Had Beardsley died in mid-1895,
+at twenty-three, he would have left behind him the achievement of an
+interesting artist; but not a single example of the genius that was
+about to astonish the world.</p>
+
+<p class="gtb">******</p>
+
+<p><i>The Yellow Book</i> phase of Beardsley’s art is very distinct from what
+went before and what was to come after. There are two types: a fine
+firm line employed with flat black masses of which the famous <i>Lady
+Gold’s Escort</i> and <i>The Wagnerites</i> are the type, and of which The
+Nightpiece is the triumph—and a very thin delicate line, generally
+for portraiture, to define faintly the body to a more firmly drawn head—of
+which the <i>Mrs. Patrick Campbell</i> is the type and <i>L’Education
+sentimentale</i> a variant—whilst the three remarkable <i>Comedy-Ballets
+of Marionettes I, II, and III</i>, show white masses used against black.</p>
+
+<p>Beardsley employed his “Japanesque mark” for the last time in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</span>
+mid-1894 in the July volume, No. 2, of <i>The Yellow Book</i>. The <i>Plays
+of John Davidson</i>, several <i>Madame Réjanes</i>, the fine <i>Les Passades</i>,
+the <i>Scarlet Pastorale</i>, and the <i>Tales of Mystery and Wonder</i> by Edgar
+Allan Poe, are all of the early 1894 <i>Yellow Book</i> phase.</p>
+
+<p>But in the third volume of <i>The Yellow Book</i>, the fanciful and delightful
+portrait of <i>The Artist in bed</i>, “<i>Par les dieux jumeaux tous les
+monstres ne sont pas en Afrique</i>,” and the famous <i>La Dame aux Camélias</i>
+standing before her dressing table, advance his handling in freedom
+and rhythm; as does the exquisite <i>The Mysterious Rose Garden</i>,
+which Beardsley described as “the first of a series of Biblical
+illustrations, and represents nothing more nor less than the <i>Annunciation</i>”—indeed
+he could not understand the objections of the prudish
+to it and resented its being misunderstood! The <i>Messalina with
+her Companion</i> is of this later <i>Yellow Book</i> phase; and the <i>Atalanta
+without the hound</i> of the suppressed Fifth Volume is a fine example
+of it.</p>
+
+<p>The beautifully wrought <i>Pierrot Invitation Card</i> for John Lane;
+the remarkable wash drawings <i>A Nocturne of Chopin</i> from the suppressed
+Volume Five, and the <i>Chopin, Ballade III Op. 47</i> of <i>The
+Studio</i>, all drawn on the eve of his expulsion from <i>The Yellow Book</i>,
+show Beardsley advancing with giant strides when the blow fell; and
+in the double-page <i>Juvenal</i> of the monkey-porters carrying the Sedan-chair,
+he foreshadows his new design. But the surest test of the change,
+as well as the date of that change, is revealed by an incident that followed
+Beardsley’s expulsion from <i>The Yellow Book</i>; for, being commissioned
+to design a frontispiece by Elkin Mathews for <i>An Evil
+Motherhood</i>, Beardsley promptly sent the rejected <i>Black Cape</i>, of the
+suppressed Fifth Volume, direct to the printers; and it was only under<span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</span>
+the dogged refusal of Elkin Mathews to produce it that Beardsley
+made the now famous design of the <i>Evil Motherhood</i> in which he entirely
+breaks from <i>The Yellow Book</i> convention and craftsmanship,
+and launches into the craftsmanship of his Great Period.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f20">
+<img src="images/fig20.jpg" alt="rose">
+<p class="caption">THE MYSTERIOUS ROSE GARDEN</p>
+<p class="caption"><i>from “The Yellow Book” Volume IV</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>It was about the time of Beardsley’s expulsion from <i>The Yellow
+Book</i> that trouble arose in America over the piracy of one of Beardsley’s
+<i>Posters</i> for Fisher Unwin, the publisher. Beardsley had made a
+mediocre poster for <i>The Pseudonym Library</i>, a woman in a street
+opposite a book shop; but followed it with the finest <i>Poster</i> he ever
+designed—a lady reading, seated in a “groaning-chair,” a scheme in
+black and purple, for <i>Christmas Books</i>—all three of <i>The Yellow Book</i>
+phase.</p>
+
+<p class="gtb">******</p>
+
+<p>There happened at this time soon after his expulsion from <i>The
+Yellow Book</i>, in mid-1895, a rather significant incident in young
+Beardsley’s life—an incident that dragged me into its comedy, and
+was to have a curious and dramatic sequel before three years were
+passed by.</p>
+
+<p>I had only as yet met Beardsley once. But it so happened by chance—and
+it was a regret to me that it so chanced—it fell to my lot to
+have to criticise an attack on modern British art in the early summer,
+and in the doing to wound Beardsley without realising it. He had
+asked for it, ’tis true—had clamoured for it—and yet resented others
+saying what he was arrogant in doing.... One of those stupid,
+narrow-vision’d campaigns against modern art that break out with
+self-sufficient philistinism, fortified by self-righteousness, amongst
+academic and conventional writers, like measles in a girls’ school, was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</span>
+in full career; and a fatuous and utterly unjust attack, led by Harry
+Quilter, if I remember rightly, leaping at the Oscar Wilde scandal for
+its happy opportunity, poured out its ridiculous moralities and charges
+against modern British art and literature over the pages of one of the
+great magazines, as though Wilde and Beardsley were England. It
+will be noted that with crafty skill the name of Beardsley was coupled
+with that of Wilde—I see the trick of “morality” now; I did not see
+it at the time. I answered the diatribe in an article entitled <i>The Decay
+of English Art</i>, in the June of 1895, in which it was pointed out that
+it was ridiculous, as it was vicious, to take Oscar Wilde in literature
+and Aubrey Beardsley in art as the supreme examples and typical examples
+of the British genius when Swinburne and young Rudyard
+Kipling and Shaw, to mention a few authors alone, Sidney Sime and
+the Beggarstaff Brothers and young Frank Brangwyn, to mention but
+two or three artists at random, with Phil May, were in the full tide of
+their achievement. Indeed, the point dwelt upon was that neither
+Wilde nor Beardsley, so far from being the supreme national genius,
+was particularly “national” in his art. Young Beardsley, remarkable
+as was his promise, had not as yet burst into full song, and in so far as
+he had given forth his art up to that time, he was born out of the
+Aesthetes (Burne-Jones and Morris) who, like the Pre-Raphaelites
+who bred them (Rossetti), were not national at all but had aped a
+foreign tongue, speaking broken English with an Italian accent, and
+had tried to see life through borrowed spectacles in frank and vaunted
+mimicry of mediæval vision. In going over Wilde’s and Beardsley’s
+claims to represent the British genius, I spoke of the art of both men
+as “having no manhood” and being “effeminate,” “sexless and unclean”—which<span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</span>
+was not at all typical of the modern achievement as a
+whole, but only of a coterie, if a very brilliantly led coterie, of mere
+precious poetasters.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f21">
+<img src="images/fig21.jpg" alt="design">
+<p class="caption">DESIGN FOR AN INVITATION CARD</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Beardsley, I afterwards heard, egged on to it by the jackals about
+him, cudgelled his brains to try and write a withering Whistlerian reply;
+and after some days of cudgelling was vastly pleased with a laboriously
+hatched inspiration. It was a cherished and carefully nurtured
+ambition of the young fellow to rival Whistler in withering brevities to
+the Press. He wrote a letter to the editor of <i>St. Paul’s</i>; and the editor,
+Reichardt, promptly sent it on to me, asking if I had any objection to
+its being printed. The letter began clumsily and ungrammatically, but
+contained at the end a couple of quite smartly witty lines. It ran thus:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p class="r">
+114 Cambridge Street<br>
+<span class="pad">S. W.</span><br>
+<span class="pad2">June 28th</span>
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>, No one more than myself welcomes frank, nay, hostile criticism, or enjoys
+more thoroughly a personal remark. But your art critic surely goes a
+little too far in last week’s issue of St. Paul’s, &amp; I may be forgiven if I take
+up the pen of resentment. He says that I am “sexless and unclean.”</p>
+
+<p>As to my uncleanliness I do the best for it in my morning bath, &amp; if he
+has really any doubts as to my sex, he may come and see me take it.</p>
+
+<p class="r">
+<span class="pad3">Yours &amp;c</span><br>
+Aubrey Beardsley
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>This letter was read and shown to Beardsley’s circle amidst ecstatic
+delight and shrill laughter, and at last despatched.</p>
+
+<p>I wrote to Reichardt that of course Beardsley had every right to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</span>
+answer my criticisms, but that I should expect my reply to be published—that
+I quite understood Beardsley’s business astuteness in
+seeking self-advertisement—but I was the last man in the world to
+allow any man to make a fool of me in print even to add stature to
+Beardsley’s inches. But I suggested that as Beardsley seemed rather
+raw at literary expression, and as I hated to take advantage of a clown
+before he had lost his milk teeth, I would give him back his sword and
+first let him polish the rust off it; advised him, if he desired to pose as
+a literary wit, that he obliterate mistakes in grammar by cutting out
+the whole of the clumsy beginning, and simply begin with “Your
+critic says I am sexless and unclean,” and then straight to his naughty
+but witty last sentence. I begged therewith to forward my reply at the
+same time, as follows:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p class="c">A Public Apology to Mr. Aubrey Beardsley.</p>
+
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,</p>
+
+<p>When a cockrel sits overlong upon the egg of the spontaneous repartee,
+his labour runs risk of betraying the strain to which he has put his untried
+skill in giving birth to gossamer or bringing forth the airy bladder of the
+scathing retort. To ape Whistler does not disprove descent from the
+monkeys. But since Mr. Beardsley displays anxiety to establish his sex, pray
+assure him that I eagerly accept his personal confession. Nor am I
+overwhelmed with his rollicking devilry in taking his morning bath—a
+pretty habit that will soon lose its startling thrill of novelty if he persist
+in it.</p>
+
+<p class="r">
+<span class="pad">Yours truly</span><br>
+<span class="pad2">Hal Dane.</span>
+</p>
+
+<p class="l">July 3rd 1895</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The young fellow, on receipt of all this, awoke with a start to the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</span>
+fact that the sword is a dangerous weapon wherewith to carve a way
+to advertisement—the other fellow may whip from the scabbard as
+deadly a weapon for wounds.</p>
+
+<p>Beardsley seems to have rushed off to Reichardt—before giving
+out my answer to the jackals who had shrieked over Beardsley’s “masterpiece”—on
+receipt of my letter and, fearful lest he might be too
+late, the young fellow anxiously pleaded that he might be allowed to
+withdraw his letter. Reichardt replied that it must depend on me. I
+then wrote to Reichardt that of course I had suspected that Beardsley’s
+childish assurance that “no one more than himself enjoys more thoroughly
+a personal remark” was a smile on the wry side of his mouth;
+but that I ought to confess that it had not been any intention of mine
+to lash <i>at him</i> but at Harry Quilter—at the same time perhaps he
+would not take it amiss from me, since I was no prude, that I thought
+it a pity that Beardsley should fritter his exquisite gifts to the applause
+of questionable jackals and the hee-haw of parasites, when he
+should be giving all his powers to a high achievement such as it would
+be a source of artistic pride for him to look back upon in the years to
+come. It is only fair to add that from that moment, Beardsley trusted
+me, and that his works as they were about to be published were sent
+to me in advance for criticism. What is more, in writing to Reichardt
+about Beardsley, I had strongly urged the young fellow to rid his signature
+of the wretched “rustic lettering” he affected, and to employ
+plain block letters as being in keeping with the beauty of his line and
+design; and to show how free he was from resenting sincere advice,
+from this time, greatly to the enhancement of his design, Beardsley
+used plain block lettering for his signature. Reichardt told me that
+tears came into the young fellow’s eyes when he read out to him a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</span>
+passage in my letter in which I had told him that, at a gathering at
+Leighton’s house, Phil May had asked the President of the Royal
+Academy whether he thought that Hal Dane had not put it rather extravagantly
+when he wrote that Beardsley was one of the supreme
+masters of line who had ever lived; to which Leighton had solemnly
+replied, before a group that was anything but friendly to Beardsley’s
+work, that he thoroughly agreed. It was a particular gratification to
+me that this little more than a lad was informed of Leighton’s appreciation
+whilst Leighton lived; for the President, a very great master
+of line himself, died about the following New Year. Phil May with
+precisely the same aim of craftsmanship in economy of line and the
+use of the line to utter the containing form in its simplest perfection,
+whilst he greatly admired the decorative employment of line and mass
+by Beardsley, considered Beardsley quite incapable of expressing his
+own age. Phil May was as masterly a draughtsman as Beardsley was
+an indifferent draughtsman; but both men could make line “sing.”</p>
+
+<p>In a brief three years, young Aubrey Beardsley was to lie a-dying:
+and as he so lay he wrote a letter to his publisher which is its own significant
+pathetic confession to this appeal that I made to him before
+it should be too late, little as one then realised how near the day of
+bitter regret was at hand.</p>
+
+<p class="gtb">******</p>
+
+<p>Beardsley during his early <i>Yellow Book</i> phase, about the July of
+1894 or a month or so afterwards, made his first essay in painting
+with oils. He had, in June or earlier, drawn the three designs for <i>The
+Comedy Ballet of Marionettes</i> which appeared in the July <i>Yellow
+Book</i>; he now bought canvas and paints and painted, with slight
+changes, <i>The Comedy Ballet No. 1</i>, in William Nicholson’s manner.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</span>
+He evidently tired of the problems of the medium, or he was tired of
+the picture; and, turning the canvas about, he painted a <i>Lady with a
+Mouse</i> on the unprimed back, between the stretchers, in the Walter
+Sickert style. “I have no great care for colour,” he said—“I only use
+flat tints, and work as if I were colouring a map, the effect aimed at
+being that produced on a Japanese print.” “I prefer to draw everything
+in little.”</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f22">
+<img src="images/fig22.jpg" alt="scarlet">
+<p class="caption">THE SCARLET PASTORALE</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>It is as likely as not that his attempt to paint <i>The Comedy Ballet I</i>
+in oils may have had something to do with its use as an advertisement
+for Geraudel’s Pastilles—as well as I can remember—which first appeared
+in <i>Le Courier Français</i> on February 17th, 1895. It was a wonderful
+decade for the poster, and this French firm offered handsome
+prizes and prices for a good artistic one; though, as a matter of fact,
+Beardsley’s posters were quite outclassed by those of far greater men
+in that realm—Cheret, the Beggarstaff Brothers, Steinlen, Lautrec,
+and others. Beardsley’s genius, as he himself knew full well, was essentially
+“in the small.”</p>
+
+<p>For some unfortunate reason, but probably with good-natured intention
+of preventing Beardsley from suffering discredit at his dismissal
+from <i>The Yellow Book</i>, John Lane whilst in America during
+the summer started a well-meaning but quite fatuous theory, much
+resented by Beardsley, that the young fellow, so far from being the
+flower of decadence, was “a pitiless satirist who will crush it out of
+existence.... He is the modern Hogarth; look at his <i>Lady Gold’s
+Escort</i> and his <i>Wagnerites</i>.... The decadent fad can’t long stand
+such satire as that. It has got to go down before it.” Scant wonder that
+the <i>Daily Chronicle</i> asked dryly: “Now, why was Mr. Lane chaffing
+that innocent interviewer?” This apology for his art bitterly offended<span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</span>
+Beardsley, who knew it to be utterly untrue, but who still more resented
+this desire to show him as being really “quite respectable.”
+As a matter of fact, Beardsley had nothing of the satirist in him; had
+he wanted to satirise anything he would have satirised the respectabilities
+of the middle-class which he detested, not the musicians and
+the rich whom he adored and would have excused of any sin. Look
+through the achievement of Beardsley and try to fling together a dozen
+designs that could be made to pass for satire of the vices of his age!
+It became a sort of cant amongst certain writers to try and whitewash
+Beardsley by acclaiming him a satirist—he was none. A dying satirist
+does not try to recall his “obscene drawings.”</p>
+
+<p class="gtb">******</p>
+
+<p>At a loose end, on his expulsion from <i>The Yellow Book</i>, Beardsley
+drifted somewhat. He now turned his attention to a literary career,
+and began to write an erotic novel which he meditated calling <i>Venus
+and Tannhäuser</i>—it was to emerge later in a much mutilated state as
+<i>Under the Hill</i>—a sly jest for Under the Venusburg or Mons Veneris.
+He completely put behind him the Greek vase-painting phase of his
+drawings for <i>The Yellow Book</i>, and developed a new craftsmanship
+which was to create his great style and supreme achievement in art.</p>
+
+<p>The smallness of the page of <i>The Yellow Book</i> had galled him by
+compelling upon him a very trying reduction of his designs to the size
+of the plate on the printed page; the reduction had always fretted
+him; it was become an irk. It compelled him largely to keep to the line
+and flat black masses of his Greek Vase phase longer than his interest
+was kept alive by that craftsmanship. His developments were uncannily
+rapid as though he knew he had but a short way to go.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f23">
+<img src="images/fig23.jpg" alt="atalanta">
+<p class="caption">ATALANTA</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><i>Baron Verdigris</i> was the transition from the <i>Morte d’Arthur</i> phase<span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</span>
+to the <i>Yellow Book</i> or Greek Vase phase; the Mrs. Whistler as <i>The
+Fat Woman</i> was the transition from his Greek vase stage; <i>Black Coffee</i>
+the end of the Greek Vase stage. Rid of the cramping limitations of
+<i>The Yellow Book</i> page and its consequent disheartening reduction,
+Beardsley was now to develop a freer use of his line and reveal a
+greater love of detail employed with a realistic decorative beauty all
+his own.</p>
+
+<p>He was still living in his house in Pimlico at 114 Cambridge Street,
+with his sister, when expelled from <i>The Yellow Book</i>. It was about this
+time that he met the poet John Gray who had been in the decadent
+movement and became a Roman Catholic priest—the friendship soon
+became more close and ripened into a warm brotherly affection. It was
+to have a most important effect on Beardsley’s life. Gray published
+Beardsley’s letters, which begin with their early acquaintance, and
+were soon very frequent and regular; these letters give us a clear intimate
+insight into Beardsley’s spiritual life and development from this
+time. Beardsley begins by calling him affectionately “My dear Mentor,”
+from which and from the letters we soon realise that Gray was
+from the first bent on turning the young fellow’s thoughts and tastes
+and artistic temperament towards entering the Roman Catholic
+Church. Indeed, soon we find Gray priming the young fellow with
+arguments to refute his “Anglican” friends.</p>
+
+<p class="gtb">******</p>
+
+<p>The bout of renewed health that had come to cheer Beardsley with
+<i>The Yellow Book</i>, lasted only to the fall of the yellow leaf. Ill health
+began again to dog his footsteps; and it was an astonishing tribute to
+his innate vitality that he could keep so smiling a face upon it.</p>
+
+<p>Whether the little house in Pimlico were sold over his head, or<span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</span>
+whether from disheartenment of ill-health, or his expulsion from <i>The
+Yellow Book</i> and all that it implied, in the July of 1895 the house at
+114 Cambridge Street was sold, and Beardsley removed to 10 and 11
+St. James’s Place, S. W. It was all rather suddenly decided upon.</p>
+
+<p>He was by this time not only drifting back to bad health; but was
+so ill that those who saw him took him for a dying man.</p>
+
+<p>And <i>The Yellow Book</i> went on without him, to die a long lingering
+ignoble death.</p>
+
+<p class="gtb">******</p>
+
+<p>Drifting, rudderless; the certainty of a living wage from The Bodley
+Head gone wholly from him; hounded again by the fell disease that
+shook his frail body, Beardsley’s wonderful creative force drove him
+to the making of a drawing which was shown to me in this early summer
+of 1895—and I awoke to the fact that a creative genius of the
+first rank in his realm had found himself and was about to give forth
+an original art of astounding power. It was the proof of the <i>Venus between
+Terminal Gods</i>. A little while later was to be seen the exquisite
+<i>Mirror of Love</i>, wrought just before the <i>Venus between Terminal
+Gods</i>. A new era had dawned for Aubrey Beardsley amidst the black
+gloom of his bitter sufferings and as bitter humiliation.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f24">
+<img src="images/fig24.jpg" alt="savoy">
+<p class="caption">TITLE-PAGE FROM “THE SAVOY” <i>NOS. 1 AND 2</i></p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="c8">VIII</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="c large sp">THE GREAT PERIOD</p>
+
+<p class="c">Mid-1895 to Yuletide 1896—Twenty-Three to Twenty-Four</p>
+
+<p class="c less sp p1">“THE SAVOY” and THE AQUATINTESQUES</p>
+
+<p class="c less sp p1">1. “THE SAVOY”</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap large">It</span> was in a state of drift, of uncertainty as to the future and even the
+present, that Aubrey Beardsley, after a year of brilliant good fortune,
+thus suddenly found himself rudderless and at sea. That fickle and
+heartless arty public that fawned upon him and fought for his smile,
+that prided itself on “discovering” him and approving his art, these
+were the last folk in the world to trouble their heads or put hand in
+pocket in order that he might live and be free to achieve his art. The
+greater public was inimical and little likely to show sympathy, far less
+to help.</p>
+
+<p>But even as he drifted, uncertain whether to pursue his art or to
+venture into literature instead, there stepped out of the void a man
+who was to make Beardsley’s path straight and his wayfaring easy.
+For, at the very moment of his perplexities, on his twenty-third birthday,
+Aubrey Beardsley was on the eve of his supreme achievement.</p>
+
+<p class="gtb">******</p>
+
+<p>In the summer of 1895, Arthur Symons, the poet and essayist,
+sought out Beardsley in his London rooms on a mission from as strange
+a providence as could have entered into Beardsley’s destiny—a man<span class="pagenum" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</span>
+who proposed to found a new magazine, with Arthur Symons as literary
+editor and Beardsley as art editor. The mere choice of editors revealed
+this fellow’s consummate flair. His name was Leonard
+Smithers; and it was to this dandified fantastic adventurer that
+Beardsley was wholly to owe the great opportunity of his life to
+achieve his supreme master-work. Had it not been for Smithers it is
+absolutely certain that Aubrey Beardsley would have died with the
+full song that was within him unsung.</p>
+
+<p>Arthur Symons has told us of his mission and of his finding Beardsley
+lying on a couch—“horribly white, I wondered if I had come too
+late.” Beardsley was supposed to be dying. But the idea of this rival
+to <i>The Yellow Book</i> which had at once begun to feel the cold draught
+of the fickle public’s neglect on the departure of Beardsley, appealed
+hugely to the afflicted man, and he was soon eagerly planning the
+scheme for its construction with Arthur Symons. No more ideal partner
+for Beardsley in the new venture could have been found than
+Arthur Symons. A thoroughly loyal man, a man of fine fibre in letters,
+he had far more than the ordinary cultured literary man’s feeling for
+pictorial art. The two men had also a common bond in their contempt
+of Mrs. Grundy and in their keen interest in the erotic emotions—Arthur
+Symons had not hesitated to besmirch the sweet name of Juliet
+by writing of a “Juliet of a Night.”</p>
+
+<p>Beardsley there and then suggested the happy name of <i>The Savoy</i>
+for the magazine; and he quickly won over Symons to the idea, so
+vital to Beardsley’s work, of making the page a quarto size in order
+to enable his work to be produced on a larger scale.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f25">
+<img src="images/fig25.jpg" alt="venus">
+<p class="caption">FRONTISPIECE FOR “VENUS AND TANNHÄUSER”</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The scheme brought back energy and enthusiasm to Beardsley, and
+he was soon feverishly at work to surpass all his former achievement.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</span>What was perhaps of far more value to Beardsley in the pursuit of his
+art, even than the new outlet to a large public, was the offer of his publisher,
+Smithers, to finance Beardsley in return for all work whatsoever
+from his hands becoming thenceforth the sole copyright of
+Smithers. This exclusive contract with Smithers we are about to see
+working to Beardsley’s great advantage and peace of mind. It made
+him a free man.</p>
+
+<p>The exclusive right to all Beardsley’s drawings from this time gives
+us a clue to the fact that between the sudden expulsion from <i>The
+Yellow Book</i> in the April of 1895 to the beginning of his work for
+Smithers, he, in his state of drift, created amongst other things two
+drawings of rare distinction, masterpieces which at once thrust him
+into the foremost rank of creative artists of his age—these drawings,
+clearly of mid-1895, since they did not belong to John Lane on the
+one hand, nor to Smithers on the other, were the masterly <i>Venus between
+Terminal Gods</i>, designed for his novel of <i>Venus and Tannhäuser</i>,
+better known as <i>Under the Hill</i>, and the exquisite <i>Mirror of
+Love</i>, or as it was also called <i>Love Enshrined in a Heart in the shape
+of a Mirror</i>. In both drawings Beardsley breaks away from his past
+and utters a clear song, rid of all mimicry whatsoever. His hand’s
+skill is now absolutely the servant to his art’s desire. He plays with the
+different instruments of the pen line as though a skilled musician
+drew subtle harmonies from a violin. His mastery of arrangement,
+rhythm, orchestration, is all unhesitating, pure, and musical. These
+two masterpieces affect the sense of vision as music affects the sense
+of sound. Beardsley steps into his kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>The man who opened the gates to Beardsley’s supreme genius was
+a fantastical usher to immortality. Leonard Smithers was a mysterious<span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</span>
+figure about whom myths early began to take shape. He was reputed
+to be an “unfrocked” attorney from Leeds. Whether an attorney from
+the north, frocked or unfrocked, or if unfrocked, for what unfrocked,
+gossip whispered and pursed the lip—but gave no clue. He came to
+London to adventure into books with an unerring flair for literature
+and for art. We have but a tangle of gossip from which to write the
+life of such a man. The tale went as to how he came to London and set
+up as a second-hand bookseller in a little slip of a shop, its narrow
+shelves sparsely sprinkled with a few second-hand books of questionable
+morality—a glass door, with a drab muslin peep-blind at the
+end, led into a narrow den from the dingy recess of which his lean
+and pale and unhealthy young henchman came forth to barter with
+such rare customers as wandered into the shop; of how, one evening,
+there drifted into the shop a vague man with a complete set of Dickens
+in the original paper covers; and of how, Smithers, after due depreciation
+of it, bought it for a few sovereigns; and how—whilst the henchman
+held the absent-minded seller in converse—Smithers slipped out
+and resold it for several hundred pounds—and how, the book being
+bought and the vague-witted seller departed, the shutters were hastily
+put up for the night; and of how Smithers, locking the muslin-curtained
+door, emptied out the glittering sovereigns upon the table
+before his henchman’s astonished eyes, and of how he and the pallid
+youth bathed their hair in showers of gold.... Smithers soon
+therefore made his daring <i>coup</i> with Burton’s unexpurgated <i>Arabian
+Nights</i>, which was to be the foundation of Smithers’s fortune. The gossip
+ran that, choosing Friday afternoon, so that a cheque written by
+him could not reach a London bank before the morning of Monday,
+Smithers ran down to the country to see Lady Burton; and after much
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</span>persuasion, and making it clear to her that the huge industry and
+scholarship of the great work would otherwise be utterly wasted, as it
+was quite unsaleable to an ordinary publisher, but would have to be
+privately issued, he induced her to sell Burton’s scrip for a couple of
+thousand pounds. Skilfully delaying the writing of the cheque for a
+sum which his account at the bank could not possibly meet, Smithers
+waited until it was impossible for the local post to reach London before
+the banks closed on Saturday morning—returned to town with
+the scrip—and spent the rest of the evening and the whole of Saturday
+in a vain and ever-increasing frantic endeavour to sell the famous
+manuscript for some seven or eight thousand pounds or so. It was
+only by dogged endeavour on the Sunday that he at last ran down his
+forlorn hope and sold it for—it is gossiped—some five thousand
+pounds. On the Monday morning the bank-porter, on opening the
+doors of the bank, found sitting on the doorstep a dandified figure of
+a man in silk hat and frock coat, with a monocle in his anxious, whimsical
+eye.... So Smithers paid the money into his account to meet
+the cheque which he had drawn and dated for this Monday, before the
+manager was likely to have opened his morning correspondence. It
+had been touch and go.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f26">
+<img src="images/fig26.jpg" alt="mirror">
+<p class="caption">THE MIRROR OF LOVE</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Smithers now ventured into the lucrative but dangerous field of
+fine editions of forbidden or questionable books of eroticism. Thus it
+came about that when John Lane sent Beardsley adrift into space,
+Smithers with astute judgment seized upon the vogue that Lane had
+cast from him, and straightway decided to launch a rival quarterly
+wherewith to usurp <i>The Yellow Book</i>. He knew that young Beardsley,
+bitterly humiliated, would leap at the opportunity. And with his remarkable
+flair for literature and art, Smithers brought Arthur Symons<span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</span>
+and Aubrey Beardsley into his venture. Leonard Smithers did more—or
+at any rate so I had it from himself later, though Smithers was not
+above an “exaggeration” to his own advantage—Beardsley’s bank-books
+alone can verify or refute it—he intended and meant to see to
+it that, Beardsley from that hour should be a free man, free from cares
+of bread, free from suppressing his genius to suit the marketplace,
+free to utter what song was in him. Whether Smithers were the unscrupulous
+rogue that he was painted by many or not, he determined
+that from thenceforth Beardsley should be assured of a sound income
+whether he, Smithers, had to beg, borrow, or steal, or jockey others,
+in order that Beardsley should have it. This dissipated-looking man,
+in whatsoever way he won his means, was at this time always well
+dressed and had every appearance of being well-to-do. He had his ups
+and downs; but he made a show of wealth and success. And he kept
+his wilful bond in his wilful way. Whosoever went a-begging for it,
+Smithers raised the money by fair means or foul that Beardsley might
+fulfil himself, for good or for ill. He knew no scruple that stood in
+Beardsley’s way. It is true that when Beardsley died, Smithers exploited
+him; but whilst he lived, Smithers was the most loyal and devoted
+friend he had.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f27">
+<img src="images/fig27.jpg" alt="cover">
+<p class="caption">A CATALOGUE COVER</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>A word-portrait of this man, drawn in the pages of a weekly paper,
+<i>M. A. P.</i>, a couple of years after Beardsley’s death, shows him as he
+appeared to the public of his day. Smithers had left the Royal Arcade
+and blossomed out into offices in King’s Street, Covent Garden; as
+town house a large mansion near the British Museum; and a “place
+in the country”; “A publisher of books, although he is generally a
+subject of veneration, is not often possessed of a picturesque and interesting
+personality. Mr. Leonard Smithers is a notable exception to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</span>the unromantic rule. Few people who know him have failed to come
+under the spell of his wit and charm. In King Street, Covent Garden,
+Mr. Smithers has his office, and receives his guests in a great room
+painted green, and full of quietness and comfortable chairs. Upon the
+walls are many wonderful originals of pictures by the late Aubrey
+Beardsley, who was one of Mr. Smithers’s greatest friends during his
+brief but brilliant career. Mr. Smithers is of about medium height and
+very strongly built. He is clean-shaven, wears a single eye-glass, and
+has singularly clear-cut aristocratic features. A man who would be
+noticed in a crowd, he owes much of his success to his curious power
+of attracting people and holding their attention. He lives in a great
+palace of a house in Bedford Square. It was once the Spanish Embassy
+and is full of beautiful and costly things.... At his country house
+at Walton-on-Naze....”</p>
+
+<p>You see, an extravagant fellow, living in the grand style, the world
+his footstool—no expense spared. But the source of income a prodigious
+mystery. Not above being sued in the law-courts nevertheless,
+for ridiculously small, even paltry, debts. A man of mystery. Such was
+Leonard Smithers; such the man who stepped into young Beardsley’s
+life on the eve of his twenty-third year, and lifted him out of the humiliation
+that had been put upon him. Well might Beardsley write:
+“a good friend as well as a publisher.”</p>
+
+<p>Smithers unlatched the gate of another garden to Beardsley; the
+which was to be a sad pity. Among this man’s activities was a dangerous
+one of issuing private editions of works not fit for the general public.
+There are certain works of enormous value which can only thus
+be published. But it was owing to the licence thus given to Beardsley
+to exercise to the full the obscene taint in him, that the young fellow<span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</span>
+was encouraged to give rein to his laboured literary indecency, his
+novel entitled in its bowdlerised form <i>Under the Hill</i>, and later to
+illustrations which are amongst the finest achievement of his rare
+craftsmanship, but hopelessly unfit for publication.</p>
+
+<p class="gtb">******</p>
+
+<p>Disgusted with <i>The Yellow Book</i>, Beardsley put his immediate past
+and influences behind him for ever, and went straight back to his
+beloved master Watteau, the one master who inspired all his highest
+achievement. His meeting Conder in the autumn greatly accelerated
+this return to the master of both. And with the brighter prospect now
+opening out before him, vigour came back to him, and the autumn
+and the early winter saw him wonderfully free from the terror that
+had again begun to dog his steps.</p>
+
+<p>Having hurriedly sold the house at 114 Cambridge Street and removed
+to 10 and 11 St. James’s Place, S. W., in the July of 1895,
+Beardsley in the late summer and early autumn was at Dieppe. Eased
+now from money cares by his contract with Smithers, and with <i>The
+Savoy</i> due to appear in December, he went back to his early inspiration
+from the 18th century, and at once his art burst into full
+song.</p>
+
+<p>Arthur Symons was at Dieppe in the autumn and there discovered
+Beardsley immersed in his work for <i>The Savoy</i>; but finds him now
+more concerned with literary aspirations than with drawing. He was
+hard at work upon his obscene novel <i>Venus and Tannhäuser</i>, the so-called
+<i>Under the Hill</i>, and was keenly interested in verse, carrying the
+inevitable portfolio about with him under his arm wherever he went
+and scribbling phrases as they came to him.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f28">
+<img src="images/fig28.jpg" alt="beach">
+<p class="caption">ON DIEPPE BEACH (THE BATHERS)</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter1" id="f29">
+<img src="images/fig29.jpg" alt="abbe">
+<p class="caption">THE ABBE</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The black portfolio, carried under his arm, led to the waggery of a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</span>city wit that whilst Beardsley had turned his back upon the city he
+could not shake off the habits and atmosphere of the Insurance clerk
+for he always entered a room cautiously as if expecting to be kicked
+violently from behind and looked as if he had “called in on behalf of
+the Prudential.”</p>
+
+<p>It is the fashion amongst the gushing to say of Beardsley that “if
+his master genius had been turned seriously towards the world of
+letters, his success would have been as undoubted there as it was in
+the world of arts.” It is true that Beardsley by his rare essays into
+literature proved a sensitive ear for literary colour in words of an
+artificial type; but his every literary effort proved his barrenness in
+literary gifts. His literary efforts were just precisely what the undergraduate,
+let loose upon London town, mistakes for literature, as university
+magazines painfully prove. He had just precisely those gifts
+that slay art in literature and set up a dreary painted sepulchre in its
+stead. He could turn out an extraordinary mimicry of a dandified
+stylist of bygone days; and the very skill in this intensely laboured
+exercise proved his utter uncreativeness in literature. He had a really
+sound sense of lilt in verse that was strangely denied to him in prose.
+It is precisely the cheap sort of precious stuff that imposes on superficial
+minds—the sort of barren brilliance that is the bewildering
+product not only of the academies but that is affected also in cultured
+city and scholastic circles.</p>
+
+<p><i>Under the Hill</i> was published in mutilated form in the coming
+<i>Savoy</i>, and afterwards in book form; and as such it baffles the wits to
+understand how it could have found a publisher, and how Arthur
+Symons could have printed this futile mutilated thing—if indeed
+he had any say in it, which is unthinkable. It is fantastic drivel, without<span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</span>
+cohesion, without sense, devoid of art as of meaning—a sheer
+laboured stupidity, revealing nothing—a posset, a poultice of affectations.
+The real book, of which all this is the bowdlerised inanity,
+is another matter; but it was so obscene, it revealed the young fellow
+revelling in an orgy of eroticism so unbridled, that it was impossible
+to publish it except in the privately printed ventures of Smithers’s
+underground press. But the real book is at least a significance. It gives
+us the real Beardsley in a self-confession such as explains much that
+would be otherwise baffling in his art. It is a frank emotional endeavour
+to utter the sexual ecstacies of a mind that dwells in a constant
+erotic excitement. To that extent at least it is art. Cut that only
+value out of it—a real revelation of life—and it yields us nothing but
+a nasty futility. But even the real book reveals a struggle with an instrument
+of expression for which Beardsley’s gifts were quite as inadequate
+as they were inadequate in the employment of colour to
+express emotion—even though in halting fashion it does discover the
+real unbridled Beardsley, naked and unashamed. It is literature at any
+rate compared with the fatuous ghost of it that was published to the
+world at large, the difference between a live man and a man of straw.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f30">
+<img src="images/fig30.jpg" alt="fruit">
+<p class="caption">THE FRUIT BEARERS</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter1" id="f31">
+<img src="images/fig31.jpg" alt="card">
+<p class="caption">A CHRISTMAS CARD</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>As a literary effort the “novel” is interesting rather in showing us
+Beardsley’s shortcomings than his promise. The occasionally happy
+images are artistic pictorially rather than in phrasing—better uttered
+pictorially than by words. Beardsley had the tuneless ear for literature
+that permits a man to write the hideous phrase “a historical essay.”
+In one so censorious as Beardsley in matters of letters and art it is
+strange to find him reeking with the ugly illiteracy of using words in
+prose that can only be employed in verse. There is a pedantic use of
+words which shows in Beardsley that innate vulgarity of mind and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</span>taste which seems to think that it is far more refined English to say
+that there is “an increased humidity in the atmosphere” than to say
+“it is raining.” We find in his prose “argent lakes,” “reticent waters,”
+“ombre gateways,” “taper-time,” “around its marge,” and suchlike
+elaborate affectations of phrasing, going cheek by jowl with the crude
+housemaidish vulgarisms of “the subtlest fish that ever were,” “anyhow
+it was a wonderful lake”—what Tree used wittily to call “re-faned”
+English and housemaid’s English jostling each other at a sort
+of literary remnant sale. Side by side with this pedantic phrasing,
+with the illiteracy of employing verse phrases in prose, and with the
+housemaid’s use of English, goes a crude vulgarity of cheap commonplaces
+such as: “The children cried out, I can tell you,” “Ah, the rorty
+little things!”, “The birds ... kept up ajargoning and refraining”;
+“commanded the most delicious view,” “it was a sweet little place”;
+“card tables with quite the daintiest and most elegant chairs”; “the
+sort of thing that fairly makes one melt”; “said the fat old thing,”
+“Tannhäuser’s scrumptious torso”; “a dear little coat,” “a sweet
+white muslin frock”; “quite the prettiest that ever was,” and the rest
+of it. It is only when Beardsley lets himself go on the wings of erotic
+fancies and the sexual emotions that seem to have been the constant
+if eternal torment of his being, that he approaches a literary achievement;
+and unfortunately it is precisely in these moods that publication
+is impossible.</p>
+
+<p>This inability to create literature in a mind so skilful to translate
+or mimic the literature of the dead is very remarkable; but when we
+read a collection of Beardsley’s letters it is soon clear that he had been
+denied artistic literary gifts; for, the mind shows commonplace, unintellectual,
+innocent of spontaneous wit of phrase or the colour of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</span>
+words. It is almost incredible that the same hand that achieved
+Beardsley’s master-work in pen line could have been the same that
+shows so dullard in his letters to his friend John Gray. In them he reveals
+no slightest interest in the humanities, in the great questions
+that vex the age—he is concerned solely with his health or some business
+of his trade, or railway fares or what not. His very religious conversion
+shows him commonplace and childish. Of any great spiritual
+upheaval, of any vast vision into the immensities, of any pity for his
+struggling fellows, not a sign!</p>
+
+<p>It is to the eternal credit of Arthur Symons as friend and critic that
+he did not encourage Beardsley in his literary aspirations, but turned
+him resolutely to the true utterance of his genius. It is in splendid
+contrast with a futile publication of Beardsley’s “Table Talk” that
+others published.</p>
+
+<p>In <i>Under the Hill</i> Beardsley reveals his inability to see even art
+except through French spectacles. He cannot grasp the German soul,
+so he had to make Tannhäuser into an Abbé—it sounded more real
+to him. The book is a betrayal of the soul of the real Beardsley—a
+hard unlovely egoism even in his love-throes, without one noble or
+generous passion, incapable of a thought for his fellows, incapable of
+postulating a sacrifice, far less of making one, bent only on satisfying
+every lust in a dandified way that casts but a handsome garment over
+the basest and most filthy licence. It contains gloatings over acts so
+bestial that it staggers one to think of so refined a mind as Beardsley’s,
+judged by the exquisiteness of his line, not being nauseated by his
+own emotions. It is Beardsley’s testament—it explains his art, his
+life, his vision—and it proves the cant of all who try to excuse Beardsley
+as a satirist. A satirist does not gloat over evil, he lashes it.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</span>Beardsley revelled in it. Nay, he utterly despised as being vulgar and
+commonplace all such as did not revel in it.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f32">
+<img src="images/fig32.jpg" alt="three">
+<p class="caption">THE THREE MUSICIANS</p>
+<p class="caption"><i>from “The Savoy” No. 1.</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter1" id="f33">
+<img src="images/fig33.jpg" alt="tailpiece">
+<p class="caption">TAILPIECE TO “THE THREE MUSICIANS”</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The story of <i>Venus and Tannhäuser</i>, bowdlerised as <i>Under the Hill</i>—by
+which Beardsley slyly means what he calls the Venusberg, for
+even Beardsley feared to <i>write</i> the Mons Veneris,—he seemed undecided
+as to which to call it—the story was without consequence,
+without cohesion, without unity; it was the laboured stringing together
+of little phrases, word pictures of moods, generally obscene
+moods and desires such as come to plague a certain type of consumptive
+whose life burns at fever heat in the troubled blood. We know
+from Arthur Symons that Beardsley was for ever jotting down passages,
+epithets, newly coined words, in pencil in odd moments during
+this month at Dieppe. He gives us a picture of Beardsley, restless, unable
+to work except in London, never in the least appealed to by nature.
+Beardsley never walked abroad; Symons never saw him look at
+the sea. When the night fell, Beardsley came out and haunted the
+casino, gazing at the life that passed. He loved to sit in the large deserted
+rooms when no one was there—to flit awhile into the room
+where the children danced—the sound of music always drew him to
+the concerts. He always carries the inevitable portfolio with him and
+is for ever jotting down notes. He writes in a little writing room for
+visitors. He agonises over a phrase—he pieces the over-polished sentences
+and phrases together like a puzzle, making them fit where best
+they can. He bends all his wits to trying to write verse. He hammers
+out the eight stanzas of <i>The Three Musicians</i> with infinite travail on
+the grassy ramparts of the old castle, and by dogged toil he brings
+forth the dainty indecencies, as later he chiselled and polished and
+chiselled the <i>translation from Catullus</i>. The innate musical sense of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</span>
+the fellow gives the verse rhythm and colour. But Beardsley failed,
+and was bound to fail, in literature, whether in verse or prose, because
+he failed to understand the basic significance of art. He failed because
+he tried to make literature an intellectual act of mimicry instead of an
+emotional act—he failed because all academism is a negation of art,
+because he mistook craftsmanship as the end of art instead of the instrument
+for emotional revelation. As Symons puts it, “it was a thing
+done to order,” in other words it was not the child of the vital impulse
+of all art whatsoever, he could not or did not create a make-believe
+whereby he sought to transmit his emotions to his fellows, for he was
+more concerned with trying to believe in his make-believe itself. It
+was not the child of emotional utterance, like his drawings—it was a
+deliberately intellectual act done in a polished form. We feel the aping
+of Wilde, of Whistler, of the old aphorists, like Pope, of the
+eighteenth century Frenchman. He uses his native tongue as if it were
+obsolete, a dead language—he is more concerned with dead words
+than with live. He tries to create a world of the imagination; but he
+cannot make it alive even for himself—he cannot fulfil a character in
+it or raise a single entity into life out of a fantastic Wardour Street of
+fine clothes—there is no body, far less soul, in the clothes. He is not
+greatly concerned with bringing people to life; he is wholly concerned
+with being thought a clever fellow with words. He is in this akin to
+Oscar Wilde.</p>
+
+<p class="gtb">******</p>
+
+<p>It was whilst at Dieppe that the famous French painter Jacques
+Blanche made a fine portrait of Beardsley; and in this hospitable
+friend’s studio it was that Beardsley set up the canvas for the picture
+he was always going to paint but never did. And it was to Beardsley’s
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</span>infinite delight that Symons took him to Puy to see the author of one
+of Beardsley’s chief literary loves, <i>La Dame aux Camélias</i>—Alexandre
+Dumas, fils.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f34">
+<img src="images/fig34.jpg" alt="savoy">
+<p class="caption">COVER DESIGN FROM “THE SAVOY” <i>NO. 1</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter1" id="f35">
+<img src="images/fig35.jpg" alt="billet-doux">
+<p class="caption">THE BILLET-DOUX</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Charles Conder also painted a rather indifferent portrait of Beardsley
+in oils which seems to have vanished. But the two finest portraits
+of Beardsley the man are word-portraits by Arthur Symons and Max
+Beerbohm.</p>
+
+<p>Symons speaks of Beardsley at this time as imagining himself to
+be “unable to draw anywhere but in England.” This was not necessarily
+an affectation of Beardsley’s as Symons seems to think; it is
+painfully common to the artistic temperament which often cannot
+work at all except in the atmosphere of its workshop.</p>
+
+<p>He was now working keenly at <i>The Savoy</i> drawings and the illustrations
+for his bowdlerised <i>Under the Hill</i>, to be produced serially in
+that magazine. The first number was due to appear in December 1895,
+and the rich cover-design in black on the pink paper of the boards,
+showed, in somewhat indelicate fashion, Beardsley’s contempt for <i>The
+Yellow Book</i>, but the contempt had to be suppressed and a second
+edition of the cover printed instead. Though the prospectus for <i>The
+Savoy</i>, being done late in the autumn of 1895, announced the first
+number for December, <i>The Savoy</i> eventually had to be put off until
+the New Year; meantime, about the Yuletide of 1895, Beardsley commenced
+work upon the famous sequence of masterpieces for <i>The Rape
+of the Lock</i>, announced for publication in February, and which we
+know was being sold in March.</p>
+
+<p>In January 1896 <i>The Savoy</i> appeared, and made a sensation in the
+art world only to be compared with the public sensation of <i>The Yellow
+Book</i>. It was a revelation of genius. It thrust Beardsley forward with<span class="pagenum" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</span>
+a prodigious stride. The fine cover design, the ivory-like beauty of the
+superb Title Page—the two black-masked figures in white before a
+dressing table—the deft witty verses of the naughty <i>Three Musicians</i>,
+the <i>Bathers on Dieppe Beach</i>, the three sumptuously rich designs of
+<i>The Abbé</i>, the <i>Toilet of Helen</i>, and <i>The Fruit-bearers</i> for the novel
+<i>Under the Hill</i> which began in this number, capped by the stately
+<i>Christmas Card</i> of <i>The Madonna and Child</i> lifted the new magazine
+at a stroke into the rank of the books of the year.</p>
+
+<p>The great French engravers of the 18th century, St. Aubin and the
+rest, with the high achievement of the Illustrators of the ’Sixties which
+Gleeson White constantly kept before Beardsley’s eyes, had guided
+him to a craftsmanship of such musical intensity that he had evolved
+from it all, ’prenticed to it by the facility acquired from his <i>Morte
+d’Arthur</i> experience, an art that was pure music. It was a revelation
+even to us who were well versed in Beardsley’s achievement. And the
+artistic and literary society of London had scarce recovered breath
+from its astonishment when about the end of February there appeared
+the masterpieces of Beardsley’s illustrations to <i>The Rape of the Lock</i>—masterpieces
+of design and of mood that set Beardsley in the first
+rank, from the beautiful cover to the cul-de-lampe, <i>The New Star</i>—with
+the sumptuous and epoch-making drawings of <i>The Dream</i>, the
+exquisite <i>Billet-Doux</i>, the <i>Toilet</i>, the <i>Baron’s Prayer</i>, and the magnificent
+<i>Rape of the Lock</i> and <i>Battle of the Beaux and Belles</i>.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f36">
+<img src="images/fig36.jpg" alt="toilet">
+<p class="caption">THE TOILET</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter1" id="f37">
+<img src="images/fig37.jpg" alt="lock">
+<p class="caption">THE RAPE OF THE LOCK</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The advance in art is prodigious. We now find Beardsley, on returning
+to the influences which were his true inspiration, at once coming
+nearer to nature, and, most interesting of all, employing line in an
+extraordinarily skilful way to represent material surfaces—we find
+silks and satins, brocades and furs, ormulu and wood, stone and metal,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</span>each being uttered into our senses by line absolutely attune to and
+interpretive of their surface and fibre and quality. We find a freedom
+of arrangement and a largeness of composition that increase his design
+as an orchestra is greater than its individual instruments. In the
+two drawings of <i>The Rape of the Lock</i> and <i>The Battle of the Beaux
+and Belles</i> it is interesting to note with what consummate skill the
+white flesh of the beauties is suggested by the sheer wizardry of the
+single enveloping line; with what skill of dotted line he expresses the
+muslins and gossamer fabrics; with what unerring power the silks and
+satins and brocades are rendered, all as distinctly rendered materially
+as the hair of the perukes; but above all and dominating all is the cohesion
+and one-ness of the orchestration in giving forth the mood of
+the thing.</p>
+
+<p class="gtb">******</p>
+
+<p>By grim destiny it was so ordained that this triumph of Beardsley’s
+life should come to him in bitter anguish. He was in Brussels in the
+February of 1896 when he had a bad breakdown. It came as a hideous
+scare to him. He lay seriously ill at Brussels for some considerable
+time. Returning to England in May, he was thenceforth to start upon
+that desperate flitting from the close pursuit by death that only ended
+in the grave. He determined to get the best opinion in London on his
+state—he was about to learn the dread verdict.</p>
+
+<p>The second number of <i>The Savoy</i> appeared in April, as a quarterly,
+and its charming cover-design of <i>Choosing the New Hat</i> screened a
+sad falling off in the output of the stricken man—for the number contained
+but the <i>Footnote portrait of himself</i>; the <i>Third Tableau of
+“Das Rheingold”</i> which he had probably already done before going
+to Brussels; a scene from <i>The Rape of the Lock</i>; and but one illustration<span class="pagenum" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</span>
+to <i>Under the Hill</i>, the <i>Ecstasy of Saint Rose of Lima</i>; whilst the
+beautiful Title Page of No. I had to do duty again for No. II—in all
+but four new drawings!</p>
+
+<p>Beardsley struggled through May with a cover for the next—the
+third—number of The Savoy to appear in July, <i>the driving of Cupid
+from the Garden</i>, and worked upon the poem of the <i>Ballad of a Barber</i>,
+making the wonderful line drawing for it called <i>The Coiffing</i>, with
+a silhouette <i>cul-de-lampe</i> of <i>Cupid with the gallows</i>; but his body was
+rapidly breaking down.</p>
+
+<p>On the 5th of June he was at 17 Campden Grove, Kensington, writing
+the letter which announces the news that was his Death Warrant,
+in which Dr. Symes Thompson pronounced very unfavourably on his
+condition this day, and ordered absolute quiet and if possible immediate
+change, wringing from the afflicted man the anguished cry: “I
+am beginning to be really depressed and frightened about myself.”
+From this dread he was henceforth destined never to be wholly free.
+It was to stand within the shadows of his room wheresoever he went.
+He was about to start upon that flight to escape from it that was to be
+the rest of his wayfaring; but he no sooner flits to a new place than
+he sees it taking stealthy possession of the shadows almost within
+reach of his hand. It is now become for Beardsley a question of how
+long he can flit from the Reaper, or by what calculated stratagem he
+can keep him from his side if but for a little while.... In this June
+of 1896 was written that “<i>Note</i>” for the July <i>Savoy, No. 3</i>, announcing
+the end of <i>Under the Hill</i>—Beardsley has made his first surrender.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f38">
+<img src="images/fig38.jpg" alt="battle">
+<p class="caption">THE BATTLE OF THE BEAUX AND THE BELLES</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter1" id="f39">
+<img src="images/fig39.jpg" alt="baron">
+<p class="caption">THE BARON’S PRAYER</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>So in mid-1896, on the edge of twenty-four, Beardsley began his
+last restless journey, flitting from place to place to rid himself of the
+terror. It was not the least bitter part of this wayfaring that he had to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</span>turn his back on London town. It has always been one of the fatuous
+falsities of a certain group of Beardsley’s apologists to write as if
+London had ignored him, and to infer that he owed his recognition to
+alien peoples—it was London that found him, London that raised him
+to a dizzy eminence even beyond his stature in art, as Beardsley himself
+feared; and to Beardsley London was the hub of the world. It was
+the London of electric-lit streets in which flaunted brazenly the bedizened
+and besmirched women and men, painted and overdressed
+for the hectic part they played in the tangle of living, if you will; but
+it was the London that Beardsley loved above all the world. And
+though Beardsley had had to sell his home in London, he carried his
+spiritual home with him—clung to a few beloved pieces of Chippendale
+furniture and to his books and the inspiration of his genius—the
+engravings after Watteau, Lancret, Pater, Prud’hon, and the like;
+above all he clung to the two old Empire ormulu candle-sticks without
+which he was never happy at his work.</p>
+
+<p>By the 6th of July he had moved to the Spread Eagle Hotel at
+Epsom; where he set to work on illustrating <i>Ali Baba and the Forty
+Thieves</i> as a Christmas Book—for which presumably was the fine
+<i>Ali Baba in the Wood</i>. But sadly enough, the poor stricken fellow is
+now fretted by his “entire inability to walk or exert himself in the
+least.” Suddenly he bends all his powers on illustrating <i>Lysistrata</i>!
+and in this July of 1896, broken by disease, he pours out such blithe
+and masterly drawings for the <i>Lysistrata</i> as would have made any
+man’s reputation—but alas! masterpieces so obscene that they could
+only be printed privately. However, the attacks of hemorrhage from
+the lungs were now very severe, and the plagued man had to prepare
+for another move—it is a miracle that, with death staring him in the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</span>
+face, and with his tormented body torn with disease, Beardsley could
+have brought forth these gay lyrical drawings wrought with such
+consummate skill that unfortunately the world at large can never look
+upon—the <i>Lysistrata</i>. It is almost unthinkable that Beardsley’s mind
+could have allowed his exquisite art to waste itself upon the frank obscenity
+which he knew, when he drew these wonderful designs, must
+render them utterly impossible for publication—that he should have
+deliberately sacrificed so much to the naughtinesses. Yet as art they
+are of a high order—they utter the emotions of unbridled sexuality
+in reckless fashion—their very mastery renders them the more impossible
+to publish. He knew himself full well that the work was
+masterwork—“I have just completed a set of illustrations to Lysistrata,
+I think they are in a way the best things I have ever done,” he
+writes to his friend the priest, John Gray, who is now striving his
+hardest to win him into the Roman Catholic Church. Gray realises
+that the end is near. Beardsley planned that the <i>Lysistrata</i> should be
+printed in pale purple.... It was probable that Beardsley reached
+the <i>Lysistrata</i> of Aristophanes through the French translation of
+Maurice Donnay—he was so anxious to assert that the purple illustrations
+were to appear with the work of Aristophanes in book form, not
+with Donnay’s translation! The <i>Lysistrata</i> finished, he turned to the
+translation and obscene illustration of the <i>Sixth Satire of Juvenal</i>.</p>
+
+<p>But even before the month of July was out, he had to be packed
+off hurriedly to Pier View, Boscombe, by Bournemouth, where, in a
+sad state of health, he passed his twenty-fourth birthday. The place
+made his breathing easier, but the doctor is “afraid he cannot stop
+the mischief.” Beardsley found relief—in the <i>Juvenal</i> drawings! “I
+am beginning to feel that I shall be an exile from all nice places for
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</span>the rest of my days,” he writes pathetically. He loathed Boscombe.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f40">
+<img src="images/fig40.jpg" alt="coiffing">
+<p class="caption">THE COIFFING</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter1" id="f41">
+<img src="images/fig41.jpg" alt="savoy">
+<p class="caption">COVER DESIGN FOR “THE SAVOY” <i>NO.</i> 4.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>With the July number, <i>No. 3</i>, <i>The Savoy</i> became a monthly magazine;
+and there is no doubt that its monthly appearance did much to
+arouse Beardsley to spurts of effort to make drawings, for he had an
+almost passionate love for the magazine. Yet this July that gave us the
+<i>Lysistrata</i> sequence only yielded the fine cover for the August <i>Savoy,
+No. 4</i>—but what a cover! To think that Beardsley drew this beautiful
+design of the lady beside a stand with grapes, beyond a gauze curtain,
+in the same month that he drew the <i>Lysistrata</i> sequence, and that it
+is the only design that could be published! It at least gives the world
+a hint of what it lost.</p>
+
+<p>August at Boscombe yielded but the richly wrought cover of the
+Two Figures and the Terminal god beside a dark lake, for the <i>September
+Savoy, No. 5</i>, which he stupidly signed Giulio Floriani, and the
+uninteresting commonplace wash drawing in white on brown paper of
+<i>The Woman in White</i> which he had made from the <i>Bon Mots</i> line
+drawing long before—there was now much searching amongst the
+drawings and scraps lying in the portfolio. But in spite of a racked
+body, the cover-design showed him at his most sumptuous employment
+of black and white.</p>
+
+<p>It should be noticed that from his twenty-fourth birthday, after
+signing the farcical Giulio Floriani, he thenceforth signs his work
+with his initials A. B., in plain letters, usually in a corner of his drawing
+within, or without, a small square label. It is true that three drawings
+made after his twenty-fourth birthday bear his full name, but
+they were all made at this time. The Wagnerian musical drawings
+were most of them “in hand,” but Smithers and Beardsley agreed
+that they should not be “unloaded” in a bunch, but made to trickle<span class="pagenum" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</span>
+through the issues of <i>The Savoy</i> so as to prevent a sense of monotony—we
+shall see before the year is out that they had to be “unloaded
+in a bunch” at the last. It is therefore not safe to date any Wagnerian
+drawings with the month of their issue. It is better to go by the form
+of signature. Then again Beardsley’s hideous fight for life had begun,
+and Arthur Symons was in a difficulty as to how many drawings he
+might get from month to month, though there was always a Wagner
+to count upon as at least one. The full signatures on the <i>Death of
+Pierrot</i> and the <i>Cover for the Book of Fifty Drawings</i> are the last signatures
+in full; and both were drawn in early September soon after
+his birthday, as we are about to see.</p>
+
+<p>Beardsley unfortunately went up to London in this August on urgent
+business, and had a serious breakdown by consequence, with
+return of the bleeding from the lungs—a train journey always upset
+him. He had to keep his room at Boscombe for weeks. And he was in
+so enfeebled a state that the doctors decided to let him risk the winter
+at Boscombe as he was now too weak to travel to the South of France.
+A despairing cry escapes his lips again: “It seems I shall never be out
+of the wood.”</p>
+
+<p>The end of August and early September yielded the pathetic <i>Death
+of Pierrot</i> that seems a prophecy of his own near end on which he was
+now brooding night and day. His strength failed him for a Cover design,
+so the powerful <i>Fourth Tableau of “Das Rheingold”</i> had to be
+used as a cover for the October <i>Savoy No. 5</i>. The <i>Death of Pierrot</i> is
+wonderful for the hush a-tiptoe of its stealthy-footed movement and
+the sense of the passion of Pierrot, as it is remarkable for the unusual
+literary beauty of its written legend.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f42">
+<img src="images/fig42.jpg" alt="cover">
+<p class="caption">COVER DESIGN FOR “THE SAVOY” <i>NO</i>. 7.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter1" id="f43">
+<img src="images/fig43.jpg" alt="pierrot">
+<p class="caption">FRONTISPIECE TO “PIERROT OF THE MINUTE”</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</span></p>
+
+<p>September brought snow to Boscombe, which boded ill for Beardsley’s
+winter.</p>
+
+<p>It was in this September that Leonard Smithers, opened his new
+offices at 4 and 5 Royal Arcade, Bond Street, whither he had moved
+from the first offices of <i>The Savoy</i> at Effingham House, Arundel Street,
+Strand; and it was now from his office and shop in the Royal Arcade
+that he proposed to Beardsley the collecting of his best works already
+done, and their publication in an <i>Album of Fifty Drawings</i>, to
+appear in the Autumn. The scheme, which greatly delighted Beardsley
+in his suffering state, would hold little bad omen in its suggestion
+of the end of a career to a man who had himself just drawn the
+<i>Death of Pierrot</i>. It roused him to the congenial effort of drawing the
+<i>Cover for A Book of Fifty Drawings</i>. The fifty drawings were collected
+and chosen with great care and huge interest by Beardsley, and this
+makes it clear that he had drawn about this time, in or before September,
+the beautifully designed if somewhat suggestive <i>Bookplate of
+the Artist</i> for himself which appeared later as almost the last of the
+Fifty Drawings. In spite of Beardsley’s excitement and enthusiasm,
+however, the book dragged on to near Christmas time, owing largely
+to the delay caused by the difficulties that strewed Vallance’s path in
+drawing up and completing the iconography. It is a proof of the extraordinary
+influences which trivial and unforeseen acts may have upon
+a man’s career that the moving of Smithers to the Royal Arcade greatly
+extended Beardsley’s public, as his latest work was at once on view to
+passers-by who frequented this fashionable resort.</p>
+
+<p>The October of 1896 saw Beardsley draw the delightful <i>Cover for
+the November Savoy, No. 7</i>, of spectacled old age boring youth “by
+the book” (there was much chatter at this time over Ibsen’s phrase<span class="pagenum" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</span>
+of “Youth is knocking at the Gate”). Beardsley also wrote the beautiful
+translation, and made the even more beautiful and famous drawing
+<i>Ave atque Vale</i> or “Hail and Farewell” for the <i>Carmen C I of
+Catullus</i>, whilst the third illustration for the November <i>Savoy</i>, the
+small <i>Tristan and Isolde</i>, shows his interest maintained in the musical
+sequence that was ever present in his thoughts, and which he intended
+to be gathered into book-form. Indeed, the whole of this October,
+Beardsley was at work writing a narrative version of Wagner’s <i>Das
+Rheingold</i>, “most of the illustrations being already finished,” as he
+himself testifies. Dent, to whom he had sent the drawing of <i>Tannhäuser
+returning to the Horselberg</i>, was trying to induce Beardsley at
+this time to illustrate the <i>Pilgrim’s Progress</i> for him. The month of
+October had opened for Beardsley happy and cheerful over a bright
+fire with books; it went out in terror for him. He fights hard to clamber
+from the edge of the grave that yawns, and he clutches at gravelly
+ground. A fortnight’s bleeding from the lungs terrified him. “I am
+quite paralysed with fear,” he cries—“I have told no one of it. It’s so
+dreadful to be so weak as I am becoming. Today I had hoped to pilfer
+ships and seashores from Claude, but work is out of the question.”
+Yet before the last of October he was more hopeful again and took
+“quite a long walk and was scarcely tired at all afterwards. So my
+fortnight’s bleeding does not seem to have done me much injury.” His
+only distress made manifest was that he could not see his sister Mabel,
+about to start on her American theatrical tour.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f44">
+<img src="images/fig44.jpg" alt="headpiece">
+<p class="caption">HEADPIECE: PIERROT WITH THE HOUR-GLASS</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter1" id="f45">
+<img src="images/fig45.jpg" alt="tailpiece">
+<p class="caption">TAILPIECE TO “PIERROT OF THE MINUTE”</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>November was to be rich in achievement for Aubrey Beardsley. It
+was to see him give to the world one of the most perfect designs that
+ever came from his hands, a design that seems to sum up and crown
+the achievement of this great period of his art—he writes that he has
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</span>just finished “rather a pretty set of drawings for a foolish playlet of
+Ernest Dowson’s, <i>The Pierrot of the Minute</i>” which was published in
+the following year of 1897—a grim irony that a boredom should have
+brought forth such beauty! As he writes Finis to this exquisite work,
+he begs for a good book to illustrate! Yet on the 5th of this November
+a cry of despair escapes him: “Neither rest or fine weather seem to
+avail anything.”</p>
+
+<p>There is something pathetic in this eager search for a book to illustrate
+at a moment when Beardsley has achieved the færy of one design
+in particular of the several good designs in the <i>Pierrot of the
+Minute</i>, that “<i>cul-de-lampe</i>” in which Pierrot, his jesting done, is
+leaving the garden, the beauty and hauntingness of the thing wondrously
+enhanced by the dotted tracery of its enclosing framework—a
+tragic comment on the wonderful <i>Headpiece</i> when Pierrot holds up
+the hour-glass with its sands near run out. It is a sigh, close on a sob,
+blown across a sheet of white paper as by magic rather than the work
+of human hands.</p>
+
+<p>It was in this November that there appeared the futile essay on
+Beardsley by Margaret Armour which left Beardsley cold except for
+the appearance of his own <i>Outline Profile Portrait of himself in line</i>,
+“an atrocious portrait of me,” which he seems to have detested for
+some reason difficult to plumb—it is neither good nor bad, and certainly
+not worse than one or two things that he passed with approval
+at this time for the <i>Book of Fifty Drawings</i>. It is a pathetically tragic
+thought that the November of the exquisite <i>Pierrot of the Minute</i> was
+for Beardsley a month of terrible suffering. He had not left his room
+for six weeks. Yet, for all his sad state, he fervently clings to the belief
+that change will rid him of that gaunt spectre that flits about the shadows<span class="pagenum" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</span>
+of his room. “I still continue in a very doubtful state, a sort of
+helpless, hopeless condition, as nobody really seems to know what is
+the matter with me. I fancy it is only change I want, &amp; that my troubles
+are principally nervous.... It is nearly six weeks now since I
+have left my room. I am busy with drawing &amp; should like to be with
+writing, but cannot manage both in my weak state.” He complains
+bitterly of the wretched weather. “I have fallen into a depressed
+state,” and “Boscombe is ignominiously dull.”</p>
+
+<p>It was now that Beardsley himself saw, for the first time, the published
+prints for the cover and the title-page of <i>Evelina</i>—of his “own
+early designing.”</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Savoy</i> for December gives us some clue to the busy work upon
+drawings in November of which he speaks, but some of the drawings
+that now appeared were probably done somewhat before this time.</p>
+
+<p>It was soon clear that the days of <i>The Savoy</i> were numbered and
+the editor and publisher decided that the December number must be
+the last. The farewell address to the public sets down the lack of public
+support as the sole reason; but it was deeper than that. Beardsley,
+spurred to it by regret, put forth all his remaining powers to make it
+a great last number if it must be so. For he drew one of the richest
+and most sumptuous of his works, the beautiful <i>A Répétition of Tristan
+and Isolde</i>—and he flung into the number all the drawings he now
+made or had made for <i>Das Rheingold</i>, which included the marvellously
+decorative <i>Frontispiece for the Comedy of The Rheingold</i>, that
+“sings” with colour, and which he dated 1897, as he often post-dated
+his drawings, revealing that he had intended the long-cherished book
+for the following year; but the other designs for the Comedy are the
+unimportant fragments <i>Flosshilde</i> and <i>Erda</i> and <i>Alberich</i>, which he,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</span>as likely as not, had by him, as it was in October that he wrote of “most
+of the illustrations being finished.” He now drew his two portraits of
+musicians, the <i>Mendelssohn</i> and the <i>Weber</i>; he somewhat fumbles
+with his <i>Don Juan, Sganarelle, and the Beggar</i> from that <i>Don Juan</i> of
+Moliere which he had ever been eager to illustrate; he gives us the
+<i>Mrs. Margery Pinchwife</i> from Wycherley’s <i>Country Wife</i>; he very
+sadly disappoints us with his <i>Count Valmont</i> from Laclos’ <i>Les Liaisons
+Dangereuses</i> for the illustration of which Beardsley had held out
+such high hopes; and he ends with <i>Et in Arcadia Ego</i>.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f46">
+<img src="images/fig46.jpg" alt="isolde">
+<p class="caption">A RÉPÉTITION OF “TRISTAN UND ISOLDE”</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter1" id="f47">
+<img src="images/fig47.jpg" alt="frontispiece">
+<p class="caption">FRONTISPIECE</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>It does the public little credit that there was such scant support for
+<i>The Savoy</i> that it had to die. The farewell note to the last number announces
+that <i>The Savoy</i> is in future to be half-yearly and a much
+higher price. But it was never to be. After all, everything depended
+on Beardsley, and poor Beardsley’s sands were near run out.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime Beardsley had been constantly fretting at the delay in
+the appearance of <i>The Book of Fifty Drawings</i> which he had completed
+in September, in spite of the date 1897 on the cover-design—an
+afterthought of Smithers, who as a matter of fact sent me an advance
+copy at Beardsley’s request in December 1896.</p>
+
+<p>The December <i>Savoy</i>, then, No. 8 and the last, saw Beardsley unload
+all his Wagnerian drawings. Through the month he was toying
+with the idea of illustrating translations of two of his favourite books,
+<i>Les Liaisons Dangereuses</i> by Laclos, and Stendhal’s <i>Adolphe</i>....</p>
+
+<p>On a Sunday, early in December, he spent the afternoon “interviewing
+himself for <i>The Idler</i>”—the interview that appeared in that
+magazine, shaped and finished by Lawrence in March 1897.</p>
+
+<p>About Christmas his edition of <i>Les Liaisons Dangereuses</i> was taking
+shape in his brain with its scheme for initial letters to each of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</span>
+170 letters, and ten full-page illustrations, and a frontispiece to each
+of the two volumes; but it was to get no further than Beardsley’s enthusiasm.
+At this Yuletide appeared <i>The Book of Fifty Drawings</i>, in
+which for the first time were seen the <i>Ali Baba in the Wood</i>, the <i>Bookplate
+of the Artist</i>, and the <i>Atalanta in Calydon</i> with the hound. This
+book holds the significant revelation of Beardsley’s own estimate of
+his achievement up to this time, for he chose his fifty best drawings;
+it holds therefore the amusing confession that he did not always know
+what was his best work. It is interesting to note that Beardsley includes
+the mediocre and commonplace <i>Merlin</i> in a circle, yet omits
+some of his finest designs. It is all the more interesting in that Beardsley
+not only laid a ban on a considerable amount of his early work,
+but made Smithers give him his solemn oath and covenant that he
+would never allow to be published, if he could prevent it, certain definite
+drawings—he particularly forbade anything from the <i>Scrap Book</i>
+then belonging to Ross, for he shrewdly suspected Ross’s malicious
+thwarting of every endeavour on Beardsley’s behalf to exchange good,
+and even late drawings, for these early commonplaces and inadequacies.
+And Smithers to my certain knowledge had in my presence
+solemnly vowed to prevent such publication. When Beardsley was
+dead, it is only fair to Smithers to say that he did resist the temptation
+until Ross basely overpersuaded him to the scandalous betrayal. However
+that was not as yet.... Evidently, though the fifty drawings
+were selected and decided upon in September, Beardsley changed one
+October drawing for something thrown out, for the October <i>Ave atque
+Vale</i> appears; and it may be that the <i>Atalanta in Calydon with the
+hound</i>, sometimes called <i>Diana</i>, and the Beardsley <i>Bookplate</i> together
+with the <i>Self-portrait silhouette</i> that makes the Finis to the Iconography,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</span>may have been done as late, and replaced other drawings.
+Beardsley dedicated the book of his collected achievement to the man
+who had stood by him in fair weather and in foul from the very beginning—Joseph
+Pennell. It was the least he could do.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f48">
+<img src="images/fig48.jpg" alt="hound">
+<p class="caption">ATALANTA—WITH THE HOUND</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter1" id="f49">
+<img src="images/fig49.jpg" alt="plate">
+<p class="caption">BEARDSLEY’S BOOK PLATE</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>December had begun with more hope for Beardsley—his lung
+gave him little or no trouble; he “suffers from Boscombe more than
+anything else.” And even though a sharp walk left him breathless, he
+felt he could scarcely call himself an invalid now, but the walk made
+him nervous. He is even looking forward to starting housekeeping in
+London again, with his sister; he hungers for town; indeed would
+be “abjectly thankful for the smallest gaieties &amp; pleasures in town.”
+And were it not that he was nervous about taking walks abroad, he
+was becoming quite hopeful again when—taking a walk about New
+Year’s Eve he suddenly broke down; he “had some way to walk in a
+dreadful state” before he could get any help. And he began the New
+Year with the bitter cry: “So it all begins over again. It’s so disheartening.”
+He had “collapsed in all directions,” and it was decided to
+take him to some more bracing place as soon as he was fit to be moved.</p>
+
+<p class="gtb">******</p>
+
+<p>So ended the great <i>Savoy</i> period! Beardsley’s triumphs seemed fated
+to the span of twelve moons.</p>
+<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="c9">IX</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="c large sp">THE GREAT PERIOD</p>
+
+<p class="c less sp p1">ESSAYS IN WASH AND LINE</p>
+
+<p class="c">1897 to the End—Twenty-Five</p>
+
+<p class="c less sp p1">II. THE AQUATINTESQUES</p>
+
+
+<p>So ill-health like a sleuth-hound dogged the fearful man. Beardsley
+was now twenty-four and a half years of age—the great <i>Savoy</i> achievement
+at an end.</p>
+
+<p>The Yuletide of 1896 had gone out; and the New Year of 1897
+came in amidst manifold terrors for Aubrey Beardsley. All hopes of
+carrying on <i>The Savoy</i> had to be abandoned. Beardsley’s condition
+was so serious at the New Year that he had to be moved from Pier
+View to a house called Muriel in Exeter Road at Bournemouth, where
+the change seemed to raise his spirits and mend his health awhile. He
+was very funny about the name of his new lodgings: “I suffer a little
+from the name of this house, I feel as shy of my address as a boy at
+school is of his Christian name when it is Ebenezer or Aubrey,” he
+writes whimsically. He began to find so much relief at Muriel, notwithstanding,
+that he was soon planning to have rooms in London
+again—at Manchester Street.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f50">
+<img src="images/fig50.jpg" alt="lady">
+<p class="caption">THE LADY WITH THE MONKEY</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>By the February he was benefited by the change, for he was
+“sketching out pictures to be finished later,” and is delighted with
+Boussod Valadon’s reproduction in gravure of his <i>Frontispiece</i> for
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</span>Theophile Gautier’s <i>Mademoiselle de Maupin</i>, for which he was now
+making the half-dozen beautiful line and wash drawings, in the style
+of the old aquatint-engravers. These wonderful drawings done—scant
+wonder that he vowed that Boussod Valadon should ever after reproduce
+his works!—he employed the same craftsmanship for the famous
+<i>Bookplate for Miss Custance</i>, later the wife of Lord Alfred Douglas,
+and he also designed the <i>Arbuscula</i> for Gaston Vuillier’s <i>History of
+Dancing</i>. For sheer beauty of handling, these works reveal powers in
+Beardsley’s keeping and reach which make the silencing of them by
+death one of the most hideous tragedies in art. The music that they
+hold, the subtlety of emotional statement, and the sense of colour that
+suffuses them, raise Beardsley to the heights. It is a bewildering display
+of Beardsley’s artistic courage, impossible to exaggerate, that he
+should have created these blithe masterpieces, a dying man.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the shadows were filled with terrors again. The bleeding
+had almost entirely ceased from his lung when his liver started copious
+bleeding instead. It frightened the poor distressed man dreadfully,
+and made him too weak and nervous to face anything. A day or two
+afterwards he was laughing at his fears of yesterday. A burst of sunshine
+makes the world a bright place to live in; but he sits by the fire
+and dreads to go out. “At present my mind is divided between the fear
+of getting too far away from England, &amp; the fear of not getting enough
+sunshine, or rather warmth near home.” But the doctors had evidently
+said more to Mrs. Beardsley than to her son, for his mother decided
+now and in future to be by Beardsley’s side. Almost the last day of
+February saw his doctor take him out to a concert—a great joy to the
+stricken man—and no harm done.</p>
+
+<p>In March he was struggling against his failing body’s fatigue to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</span>
+draw. He also started a short story <i>The Celestial Lover</i>, for which he
+was making a coloured picture; for he had bought a paint-box. March
+turned cold, and Beardsley had a serious set-back. The doctor pursed
+a serious lip over his promise to let him go up to town—to Beardsley’s
+bitter disappointment. The doctor now urged a move to the South—if
+only even to Brittany. Beardsley began to realise that the shadows in
+his room were again haunted; “I fancy I can count my life by months
+now.” Yet a day or two later, “Such blessed weather to-day, trees in
+all directions are putting forth leaves.” Then March went out with
+cold winds, and bleeding began again, flinging back the poor distracted
+fellow amongst the terrors. He wrote from his bed and in pencil: “Oh
+how tired I am of hearing my lung creak all day, like a badly made
+pair of boots.... I think of the past winter and autumn with unrelieved
+bitterness.” The move to London for the South was at last
+decided upon, for the first week in April—to the South of France by
+easy stages. He knew now that he could never be cured, but he hoped
+that the ravages of the disease could be prevented from becoming
+rapid.</p>
+
+<p>On the 30th of March in a letter to his friend John Gray, now even
+more eager to win him to the Church of Rome, he pleads that he ought
+to have the right to beg for a few months more of life—“Don’t think
+me foolish to haggle about a few months”—as he has two or three
+pictured short stories he wants to bring out; but on the following day,
+Wednesday the 31st of March 1897, he was received into the Roman
+Catholic Church—on the Friday after, the 2nd of April, he took the
+Sacrament which had to be brought to him, to his great grief, since
+he could not go to the Church. He was to be a Roman Catholic for<span class="pagenum" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</span>
+near upon a twelvemonth. From this day of his entering the Church
+of Rome he wrote to John Gray as “My dear brother.”</p>
+
+<p>There is something uncanny in the aloofness of Beardsley’s art
+from his life and soul. His art gives no slightest trace of spiritual upheaval.
+It is almost incredible that a man, if he were really going
+through an emotional spiritual upheaval or ecstasy, could have been
+drawing the designs for <i>Mademoiselle de Maupin</i>, or indeed steeping
+in that novel at all, or drawing the <i>Arbuscula</i>. For months he has been
+led by the friendship of the priest John Gray towards Holy Church;
+yet it is not six months since he has put the last touches on <i>Under the
+Hill!</i> and drawn the designs for <i>Lysistrata</i> and the <i>Juvenal!</i> not five
+months since he has drawn his <i>Bookplate!</i> And by the grim irony of
+circumstance, he entered the Church of Rome in the same month that
+there appeared in <i>The Idler</i> his confession: “To my mind there is
+nothing so depressing as a Gothic Cathedral. I hate to have the sun
+shut out by the saints.” This interview in the March <i>Idler</i> by Lawrence,
+one of the best interviewers of this time, who made the framework and
+then with astute skill persuaded Beardsley to fill in the details, was
+as we know from Beardsley’s own letters to his friend John Gray,
+written by himself about the Yuletide of the winter just departing.
+That interview will therefore remain always as an important evidence
+by Beardsley of his artistic ideals and aims and tastes. It is true that
+he posed and strutted in that interview; and, having despatched it,
+was a little ashamed of it, with a nervous “hope I have not said too
+many foolish things.” But it is a baffling tribute to the complexity of
+the human soul that the correspondence with the poet-priest John
+Gray proves that whilst John Gray, whose letters are hidden from us,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</span>
+was leading Beardsley on his spiritual journey to Rome, he was
+lending him books and interesting him in books, side by side with
+lives of the saints, which were scarcely remarkable for their fellowship
+with the saints.</p>
+
+<p>Beardsley was rapidly failing. On Wednesday, the 7th of April, a
+week after joining the Church of Rome, he passed through London,
+staying a day or two at the Windsor Hotel—a happy halt for Beardsley
+as his friend John Gray was there to meet him—and crossed to
+France, where on Saturday the 18th of April he wrote from the Hotel
+Voltaire, quai Voltaire, in Paris, reporting his arrival with his devoted
+mother. Paris brought back hope and cheerfulness to the doomed man.
+He loved to be in Paris; and it was in his rooms at this hotel that in
+May he was reading <i>The Hundred and One Nights</i> for the first time,
+and inspired by it, drew his famous <i>Cover for Ali Baba</i>, a masterpiece
+of musical line, portraying a seated obese voluptuous Eastern figure
+resplendent with gems—as Beardsley himself put it, “quite a sumptuous
+design.”</p>
+
+<p>Beardsley had left Bournemouth in a state of delight at the prospect
+of getting to the South of France into the warmth and the sunshine.
+He felt that it would cure him and cheat the grave. In Paris he
+was soon able to walk abroad and to be out of doors again—perhaps
+it had been better otherwise, for he might then have gone further to
+the sun. There was the near prospect also of his sister, Mabel Beardsley’s
+return from America and their early meeting. He could now
+write from a café: “I rejoice greatly at being here again.” And though
+he could not get a sitting-room at the hotel, his bed was in an alcove
+which, being shut off by a curtain, left him the possession by day of a
+sitting-room and thereby rid him of the obsession of a sick room—he
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</span>could forget he was a sick man. And though the hotel was without a
+lift, the waiters would carry him up stairs—he could not risk the
+climbing. And the bookshops and print-shops of Paris were an eternal
+joy to him.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f51">
+<img src="images/fig51.jpg" alt="cover">
+<p class="caption">COVER DESIGN FOR “THE FORTY THIEVES”</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>With returning happiness he was eating and drinking and sleeping
+better. He reads much of the lives of the saints; is comforted by his
+new religion; reads works of piety, and—goes on his way poring over
+naughtinesses. But he has thrust the threatening figure of death out
+of his room awhile—talks even of getting strong again quite soon.</p>
+
+<p>But the usually genial month of May in Paris came in sadly for
+Beardsley, and the sombre threat flitted back into the shadows of his
+room again. He had the guard of an excellent physician, and the following
+day he felt well again; but he begs Gray to pray for him. A
+month to St. Germain-en-Laye, just outside Paris, was advised; and
+Beardsley, going out to see the place, was delighted with its picturesqueness—indeed
+St. Germain-en-Laye was an ideal place to inspire
+him to fresh designs. The Terrace and Park and the Hotel itself
+breathe the romance of the 18th and 17th centuries. Above all the
+air was to make a new man of him.</p>
+
+<p>The young fellow felt a pang at leaving Paris, where Gray had secured
+him the friendship of Octave Uzanne and other literary celebrities.
+And the railway journey, short as it was, to and fro, from St.
+Germain, upset Beardsley as railway travelling always did. It cautioned
+care.</p>
+
+<p>Before May was out, Beardsley moved out to St. Germain-en-Laye,
+where he found pleasant rooms at the Pavilion Louis XIV, in the rue
+de Pointoise. The place was a joy to him. But the last day of May
+drove him to consult a famous physician about his tongue, which was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</span>
+giving him trouble; the great man raised his hopes to radiant pitch
+by assuring him that he might get quite rid of his disease even yet—if
+he went to the mountains and avoided such places as Bournemouth
+and the South of France! He advised rigorous treatment whilst at St.
+Germain. However his drastic treatment of rising at cockcrow for a
+walk in the forest and early to bed seems to have upset Beardsley’s
+creaking body. The following day, the first of June, the bleeding of
+the lungs started again and made him wretched. The arrival of his
+sister, however, was a delight to him, and concerning this he wrote his
+delicious waggery that she showed only occasional touches of “an
+accent which I am sure she has only acquired since she left America.”
+His health at once improved with his better spirits.</p>
+
+<p>Beardsley read at St. Germain one of the few books by a living genius
+of which we have any record of his reading, Meredith’s <i>Evan Harrington</i>;
+it was about the time that the <i>Mercure</i> published in French
+the <i>Essay on Comedy</i> which started widespread interest in the works of
+Meredith.</p>
+
+<p>By mid-June Beardsley was greatly cheered; “everyone in the hotel
+notices how much I have improved in the last few days”; but his sitting
+out in the forest was near done. A cold snap shrivelled him, and
+lowered his vitality; a hot wave raised his hopes, only to be chilled
+again; and then sleep deserted him. On the 2nd of July he made a
+journey into Paris to get further medical advice; he had been advised
+to make for the sea and it had appealed to him. His hopes were raised
+by the doctor’s confidence in the cure by good climates, and Beardsley
+decided on Dieppe. Egypt was urged upon him, but probably the
+means forbade.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f52">
+<img src="images/fig52.jpg" alt="ali baba">
+<p class="caption">ALI BABA IN THE WOOD</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Thus, scarce a month after he had gone to St. Germain in high
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</span>hopes, Beardsley on the 6th of July was ordered to Dieppe, whence
+he wrote of his arrival on the 12th of July at the Hotel Sandwich in
+the rue Halle au Blé. He was so favoured with splendid weather that
+he was out and about again; and he was reading and writing. Fritz
+Thaulow’s family welcomed him back. He scarcely dares to boast of
+his improved health, it has seemed to bring ill-luck so often. But best
+of all blessings, he was now able to work. It was in this August that he
+met Vincent O’Sullivan, the young writer. Here he spent his twenty-fifth
+birthday. Before the month was half through he was fretting to
+be back in Paris for the winter. September came in wet and cold. He
+found this Hotel rather exposed to the wind, and so was taken to more
+sheltered lodgings in the Hotel des Estrangers in the rue d’Aguado,
+hoping that Dieppe might still know a gentle September. Though the
+weather remained wet and cold, he kept well; but caution pointed to
+Paris. His London doctor came over to Dieppe on holiday, cheered
+him vastly with hopes of a complete recovery if he took care of himself,
+and advised Paris for the early winter. Beardsley, eager as he was
+for Paris, turned his back on Dieppe with a pang—he left many
+friends. However, late September saw him making for Paris with unfeigned
+joy, and settling in rooms at the Hotel Foyot in the rue Tournon
+near the Luxembourg Gardens.</p>
+
+<p>His arrival in his beloved Paris found Beardsley suffering again
+from a chill that kept him to his room; but he was hopeful. The doctor
+considered him curable still; he might have not only several years
+of life before him “but perhaps even a long life.” But the scorching
+heat of the days of his arrival in Paris failed to shake him free of the
+chill. Still, the fine weather cheered him and he was able to be much<span class="pagenum" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</span>
+out of doors. Good food and turpentine baths aided; and he was—reading
+the <i>Memoirs of Casanova!</i> But he had grown cautious; found
+that seeing many people tired him; and begs for some “happy and
+inspiring book.” But as October ran out, the doctors began to shake
+solemn heads—all the talk was henceforth of the South of France.
+“Every fresh person one meets has fresh places to suggest &amp; fresh objections
+to the places we have already thought of. Yet I dare not linger
+late in Paris; but what a pity that I have to leave!” Biarritz was put
+aside on account of its Atlantic gales; Arcachon because pictures of
+it show it horribly “Bournemouthy.” The Sisters of the Sacré Cœur
+sent him a bottle of water from Lourdes. “Yet all the same I get
+dreadfully nervous, &amp; stupidly worried about little things.” However,
+the doctors sternly forbade winter in Paris. November came in chilly,
+with fogs; and Beardsley felt it badly. The first week of November
+saw his mother taking him off southwards to the sun, and settling in
+the rooms at the Hotel Cosmopolitain at Mentone which was to be his
+last place of flitting.</p>
+
+<p>Yet Beardsley left Paris feeling “better and stronger than I have
+ever been since my school days”; but the fogs that drove him forth
+made him write his last ominous message from the Paris that he loved
+so well: “If I don’t take a decided turn for the better now I shall go
+down hill rather quickly.”</p>
+
+<p>At Mentone Beardsley felt happy enough. He liked the picturesque
+place. Free from hemorrhage, cheered by the sunshine, he rallied
+again and was rid of all pains in his lungs, was sleeping well, and eating
+well; was out almost all day; and people noticed the improvement
+in him, to his great glee. And he was busying himself with illustrations
+for Ben Jonson’s <i>Volpone</i>, and was keenly interested in a new
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</span>venture by Smithers who proposed a successor to <i>The Savoy</i> which he
+wished to call <i>The Peacock</i>.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f53">
+<img src="images/fig53.jpg" alt="volpone">
+<p class="caption">COVER DESIGN FOR “VOLPONE”</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The mountain and the sea suited Beardsley. “I am much happier
+and more peaceful,” but “the mistral has not blown yet.”</p>
+
+<p>So, in this November of 1897 Beardsley wrought for the <i>Cover of
+Volpone</i> one of the most wonderful decorative designs that ever
+brought splendour of gold on vellum to the cover of any mortal’s book.
+He also made a pen drawing for the <i>Cover of a prospectus for Volpone</i>,
+which was after his death published in the book as a <i>Frontispiece</i>, for
+which it was in no way intended and is quite unfitted, and concerning
+which he gave most explicit instructions that it should not appear in
+the book at all as he was done with the technique of it and had developed
+and created a new style for the book wholly unlike it. All the
+same, it might have been used without hurt to the other designs, or so
+it seems to me, as a Title Page, since <i>Volpone</i> is lettered on a label
+upon it. Nevertheless Beardsley never intended nor desired nor would
+have permitted that it should appear in the body of the book at all;
+for it is, as he points out, quite out of keeping with the whole style of
+the decorations. It was only to be employed as an attraction on the
+<i>Prospectus</i>. But in this <i>Prospectus Cover for Volpone</i> his hand’s skill
+reveals no slightest hesitation nor weakness from his body’s sorry
+state—its lines are firmly drawn, almost to mechanical severity. And
+all the marvellous suggestion of material surfaces are there, the white
+robe of the bewigged figure who stands with hands raised palm to
+palm suppliant-wise—the dark polished wood of the gilt doorway—the
+fabric of the curtains—the glitter of precious metals and gems.</p>
+
+<p>In a letter to “dear Leonardo” of this time he sent a “complete<span class="pagenum" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</span>
+list of drawings for the <i>Volpone</i>,” suggested its being made a companion
+volume to <i>The Rape of the Lock</i>, and asked Smithers to announce
+it in <i>The Athenæum</i>. Besides the now famous and beautiful
+<i>Cover</i>, he planned 24 subjects, as Smithers states in his dedication of
+<i>Volpone</i> to Beardsley’s mother, though the fine initials which he did
+execute are, strangely enough, not even mentioned in that list. He reveals
+that the frontispiece is to be, like the design of the prospectus,
+<i>Volpone and his treasure</i>, but that is to be in line and wash—obviously
+in the style of <i>The Lady and the Monkey</i>—yet strangely enough,
+the remaining 23 subjects he distinctly puts down as being in “line”!
+And it is in this letter that he promises “a line drawing for a Prospectus
+in a few days,” stating especially that it will be a less elaborate
+and line version of the <i>Frontispiece</i>—and that it is not to appear in
+the book. We have the line drawing for the <i>Prospectus</i>—and we can
+only guess what a fine thing would have been this same design treated
+in the manner of <i>The Lady and the Monkey</i> or the <i>Initials</i>. That, in
+this list, 23 of the 24 designs were to be in line is a little baffling in
+face of the fact that the <i>Initials</i> were in the new method, line with
+pencil employed like a wash, and that Beardsley himself definitely
+states, as we shall see in a letter written on the 19th of this month,
+that the drawings are a complete departure in method from anything
+he had yet done, which the <i>Initials</i> certainly were.</p>
+
+<p>On the 8th of December, Beardsley wrote to “friend Smithers,”
+sending the <i>Cover Design for Volpone</i> and the <i>Design for the Prospectus
+of Volpone</i>, begging for proofs, especially of the <i>Design for
+the Prospectus</i>, “on various papers at once.” Smithers sent the proofs
+of the two blocks with a present of some volumes of Racine for
+Beardsley’s Christmas cheer. The beautiful <i>Miniature</i> edition of <i>The</i><span class="pagenum" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</span>
+<i>Rape of the Lock</i>, with Beardsley’s special <i>Cover-design in gold on
+scarlet</i>, had just been published—the “little Rapelets” as Beardsley
+called them.</p>
+
+<p>However, these 24 designs for the <i>Volpone</i> were never to be. But
+we know something about them from a letter to Smithers, written on
+the 19th of December, which he begins with reference to the new magazine
+of <i>The Peacock</i> projected by Smithers, of which more later.
+Whilst delighted with the idea of editing <i>The Peacock</i>, Beardsley expresses
+fear lest the business and turmoil of the new venture may put
+the <i>Volpone</i> into second place, and he begs that it shall not be so, that
+there shall be no delay in its production. He evidently sent the <i>Initials</i>
+with this letter, for he underlines that <i>Volpone</i> is to be an important
+book, as Smithers can judge from the drawings that Beardsley is now
+sending him—indeed the <i>Initials</i> were, alas! all that he was ever destined
+to complete—the 24 illustrations were not to be. That these
+<i>Initials</i> were the designs sent is further made clear by the remark that
+the new work is a complete, “a marked departure as illustrative and
+decorative work from any other arty book published for many years.”
+He pronounces in the most unmistakable terms that he has left behind
+him definitely all his former methods. He promises the drawings to be
+printed in the text by the first week in January, and that they shall be
+“good work, the best I have ever done.”</p>
+
+<p>On the morrow of Christmas, Beardsley was writing to Smithers,
+urging on the production of the <i>Prospectus for Volpone</i>; and it is interesting
+to find in this Yuletide letter that the fine drawing in line and
+wash, in his aquatint style, of <i>The Lady and the Monkey</i>, was originally
+intended for the <i>Volpone</i> and not for the set of the <i>Mademoiselle
+de Maupin</i> in which it eventually appeared; but was cast out of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</span>
+<i>Volpone</i> by Beardsley as “it will be quite out of keeping with the rest
+of the initials.” So that the style of the Initials was clearly the method
+he had intended to employ for his illustrations.</p>
+
+<p>What his remarkable creative fancy and dexterity of hand designed
+for the illustrations to <i>Volpone</i> only <i>The Lady and the Monkey</i> and the
+<i>Initials</i> can hint to us—he was never to create them.</p>
+
+<p>The sunshine and the warmth, the picturesque surroundings of the
+place, the mountains and the sea, brought back hope to the plagued
+fellow; and again he clambered out of the grave. Languor and depression
+left him. He was on the edge of Yuletide and had known no cold
+or chill; indeed his only “grievance is mosquitoes.” He would weigh
+himself anxiously, fearful of a set-back at every turn.</p>
+
+<p class="gtb">******</p>
+
+<p>Now, a fantastically tragic fact of Beardsley’s strange career—a fact
+that Max Beerbohm alone of all those who have written upon Beardsley
+has noticed—was the very brief period of the public interest in him.
+Beardsley arose to a universal fame at a bound—with <i>The Yellow
+Book</i>; he fell from the vogue with as giddy a suddenness. With the
+last number of <i>The Savoy</i> he had vanished from the public eye almost
+as though he had never been. The Press no longer recorded his doings;
+and his failure to keep the public interest with <i>The Savoy</i>, and
+all its superb achievement, left but a small literary and artistic coterie
+in London sufficiently interested in his doings to care or enquire
+whether he were alive or dead or sick or sorry, or even as to what new
+books he was producing. The <i>Book of Fifty Drawings</i> seemed to have
+written Finis to his career. Nobody realised this, nor had better cause
+to realise it, than Leonard Smithers. It had been intended to continue
+<i>The Savoy</i> in more expensive form as a half-yearly volume; but
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</span>Smithers found that it was hopeless as a financial venture—it had all
+ended in smoke. Smithers was nevertheless determined to fan the public
+homage into life again with a new magazine the moment he thought
+it possible. And the significance of the now very rare “newspaper cutting”
+had not been lost upon Beardsley himself. So it had come about
+that Smithers had planned the new magazine, to be called <i>The Peacock</i>,
+to appear in the April of 1898, to take the place of <i>The Savoy</i>;
+and had keenly interested Beardsley in the venture. For once Beardsley’s
+flair for a good title failed him, and he would have changed the
+name of <i>The Peacock</i> to <i>Books and Pictures</i>, which sounded commonplace
+enough to make <i>The Peacock</i> appear quite good when otherwise
+it seemed somewhat pointless.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f54">
+<img src="images/fig54.jpg" alt="initial">
+<p class="caption">INITIAL FOR “VOLPONE”</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Beardsley’s letter of the 19th of December to Smithers was clearly
+in reply to the urging of Smithers that Beardsley should be the editor
+of his new magazine <i>The Peacock</i> and should design the cover and
+whatever else was desired by Smithers. But Beardsley makes one unswerving
+condition, and but one—that “it is quite <i>agreed that Oscar
+Wilde contributes nothing to the magazine, anonymously, pseudonymously
+or otherwise</i>.” The underlining is Beardsley’s. Beardsley’s
+detestation of Wilde, and of all for which Wilde stood in the public
+eye, is the more pronounced seeing that both men had entered the
+Church of Rome with much publicity. Beardsley would not have
+Wilde in any association with him at any price.... Before Beardsley
+leaves the subject of <i>The Peacock</i> he undertakes to design “a
+resplendent peacock in black and white” and reminds Smithers that
+he has “already some fine wash drawings” of his from which he
+can choose designs for the first number of the magazine. So that we at
+least know that this first number of <i>The Peacock</i> was to have had a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</span>
+resplendent peacock in black and white for its cover, and that it was
+to have been adorned with the superb decorations for <i>Mademoiselle de
+Maupin</i>, the supreme artistic achievement of Beardsley’s resplendent
+skill. He outstripped in beauty of handling even his already exquisite
+craftsmanship: and it is the most tragic part of his tragedy of life that
+he was to die before he had given the world the further fulfilment
+of his wondrous artistry—leaving us wondering as to what further
+heights he might have scaled.</p>
+
+<p>Beardsley knew full well that these drawings in line and wash, in
+his “aquatint” style, were his supreme achievement.</p>
+
+<p>We know from a letter from Beardsley in this month that Smithers
+was still at his little office at No. 4, in the Royal Arcade, off Bond
+Street, whence Smithers sent me a coloured engraving of the <i>Mademoiselle
+de Maupin</i>, at Beardsley’s request, which had been beautifully
+reproduced in a very limited edition. Though Beardsley himself
+realised his weakness in oil painting, he would have made a mark in
+watercolours, employed with line, like coloured engravings.</p>
+
+<p>But the gods had willed that it should not be.</p>
+
+<p>Beardsley always had the astuteness to give great pains and care to
+the planning of his prospectuses—he watched over them with fatherly
+anxiety and solicitude. But what is less known is the very serious part
+he played on the literary editor’s side of the magazine of which he was
+art-editor. And in his advice to Smithers concerning the new venture
+of <i>The Peacock</i>, he has left to us not only the astute pre-vision upon
+which he insisted to Smithers, but he reveals his own tastes and ideals
+in very clear terms. The magazine, as he wisely warns Smithers,
+should not be produced “unless you have piles of stuff up your editorial
+sleeves.” And he proceeded to lay down with trenchant emphasis<span class="pagenum" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</span>
+his ideals for the conduct of a magazine and, incidently, his opinions
+of the art and literature of the day, revealing a shrewd contempt for
+the pushful mediocrities who had elbowed their way into the columns
+of <i>The Yellow Book</i> and even <i>The Savoy</i>. “The thing,” he writes,
+“must be edited with a savage strictness, and very definite ideas about
+everything get aired in it. Let us give birth to no more little backbone-less
+babies. A little well-directed talent is in a periodical infinitely
+more effective than any amount of sporadic and desultory genius (especially
+when there is no genius to be got).” Beardsley gives in more
+detail his mature attitude towards literature: “On the literary side,
+impressionistic criticism and poetry and cheap short-storyness should
+be gone for. I think the critical element should be paramount. Let
+verse be printed very sparingly.... I should advise you to let
+Gilbert Burgess do occasional things for us. Try to get together a staff.
+Oh for a Jeffreys or a Gibbon, or anybody with something to say.”...
+And then we get in definite terms his sympathies and antipathies
+in art—“On the art side, I suggest that it should attack <i>untiringly
+and unflinchingly</i> the Burne-Jones and Morrisian mediæval
+business, and set up a wholesome 17th and 18th century standard of
+what picture making should be.”</p>
+
+<p>There we have Beardsley’s whole range and also, be it confessed,
+his limitations. To the 18th century he owed all; and on the edge of
+eternity, unreservedly, frankly, and honourably, he made the solemn
+confession of his artistic faith.</p>
+<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="c10">X</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="c large sp">THE END</p>
+
+<p class="c large p1">1898</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap large">Yet</span> the cruelty of Fate but more grimly pursued the stricken man
+with relentless step. December went out in “a pitiless drench of rain.”
+It kept Beardsley indoors. A week of it gave place to the sunshine
+again, and his hopes were reborn.</p>
+
+<p>So the Yuletide of 1897 came and went; and the New Year broke,
+with Beardsley dreaming restless dreams of further conquests.</p>
+
+<p>In the early days of the New Year, the dying man’s hopes were
+raised by the sight of “a famous Egyptologist who looks like a corpse,
+has looked like one for fourteen years, who is much worse than I am,
+&amp; yet lives on and does things. My spirits have gone up immensely
+since I have known him.”... But the middle of the month saw the
+cold north-east wind come down on Mentone, and it blew the flickering
+candle of Beardsley’s life to its guttering. After the 25th of January
+he never again left his room. February sealed his fate. He took to his
+bed, from which he arose but fitfully, yet at least he was granted the
+inestimable boon of being able to read. The Egyptologist also took to
+his bed—a bad omen for Beardsley. By the end of February the poor
+plagued fellow had lost heart—he felt the grave deepening and could
+not summon the will any further to clamber out of it.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f55">
+<img src="images/fig55.jpg" alt="pierrot">
+<p class="caption">THE DEATH OF PIERROT</p>
+<p class="caption1">“<i>As the dawn broke, Pierrot fell into his last sleep. Then upon tip-toe, silently up the stair, noiselessly
+into the room, came the comedians Arlecchino, Pantaleone, il Dottore, and Columbina,
+who with much love carried away upon their shoulders, the white frocked clown of Bergamo;
+whither, we know not.</i>”</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The sands in the hour-glass of Pierrot were running low. It was
+soon a fearful effort to use his beloved pen. Anxious to complete his
+designs and decorations for the <i>Volpone</i>, and remembering the pushing
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</span>forward of the <i>Prospectus</i> that he had urged on the publisher, he
+had fallen back on the pencil—as the elaborately drawn <i>Initial</i> letters
+show—for each of the scenes in <i>Volpone</i>, employing pencil with
+the consummate tact and beauty of craftsmanship that had marked
+his pen line and his aquatintesques in line and wash. Whatever
+dreams he had of full-paged illustrations in line and wash had now
+to be abandoned. Just as in his Great Period of <i>The Savoy</i> he had
+come nearer to nature and had discovered the grass on the fields and
+flowers in the woods to be as decorative under the wide heavens as they
+were when cut in glasses “at Goodyears” in the Royal Arcade; just as
+he had found that fabrics, gossamer or silk or brocade, were as decorative
+as were flat black masses; just as he found intensely musical
+increase in the orchestration of his line as he admitted nature into his
+imagination; so now he came still nearer to nature with the pencil,
+and his Satyr as a terminal god illumined by the volume of atmosphere
+and lit by the haunting twilight, like his Greek column against the
+sky, took on quite as decorative a form as any flatness of black or
+white in his Japanesque or Greek Vase-painting phases. But as his
+skilled fingers designed the new utterance to his eager spirit, the
+fragile body failed him—at last the unresponsive pencil fell from his
+bloodless fingers—his work was done.</p>
+
+<p>As the young fellow lay a-dying on the 7th of March, nine days before
+he died he scribbled with failing fingers that last appeal from
+the Hotel Cosmopolitain at Mentone to his friend the publisher Leonard
+Smithers that he himself had put beyond that strange man’s power
+to fulfil—even had he had the will—for “the written word remains,”
+and, printed, is scattered to the four winds of heaven:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p class="c">Jesus is our Lord &amp; Judge</p>
+
+<p>Dear Friend, I implore you to destroy all copies of Lysistrata &amp; bad
+drawings. Show this to Pollitt and conjure him to do same. By all that is
+holy—all obscene drawings.</p>
+
+<p class="r">
+Aubrey Beardsley.<br>
+
+In my death agony.
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>But this blotting out was now beyond any man’s doing. The bitter repentance
+of the dying Beardsley conforms but ill with the canting
+theories of such apologists as hold that Beardsley was a satirist lashing
+the vices of his age. Beardsley had no such delusions, made no such
+claims, was guiltless of any such self-righteousness. He faced the stern
+facts of his own committing; and almost with the last words he wrote
+he condemned the acts of his hands that had sullied a marvellous
+achievement—and he did so without stooping to any attempt at palliation
+or excuse. His dying eyes gazed unflinchingly at the truth—and
+the truth was very naked. The jackals who had egged him on to
+base ends and had sniggered at his obscenities, when his genius might
+have been soaring in the empyrean, could bring him scant comfort as
+he looked back upon the untidy patches of his wayfaring; nor were
+they the likely ones to fulfil his agonised last wishes—indeed, almost
+before his poor racked body was cold, they were about to exploit not
+only the things he desired to be undone, but they were raking together
+for their own profit the earlier crude designs that they knew
+full well Beardsley had striven his life long to keep from publication
+owing to their wretched mediocrity of craftsmanship.</p>
+
+<p>On the sixteenth day of the March of 1898, at twenty-five years
+and seven months, his mother and his sister by his side, the racked
+body was stilled, and the soul of Aubrey Beardsley passed into eternity.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</span>
+The agonised mother who had been his devoted companion and guardian
+throughout this long twelvemonth of flitting flight from death,
+together with his beloved sister Mabel Beardsley, were with him to
+the end. They were present at the Cathedral Mass; and “there was
+music.” So the body of Aubrey Beardsley was borne along the road
+that winds from the Cathedral to the burial place that “seemed like
+the way of the Cross—it was long and steep and we walked.” They
+laid him to rest in a grave on the edge of the hill hewn out of the rock,
+a sepulchre with an arched opening and a stone closing it, so that they
+who took their last walk beside him “thought of the sepulchre of The
+Lord.”</p>
+
+<p class="c large sp">Hail and Farewell!</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f56">
+<img src="images/fig56.jpg" alt="vale">
+<p class="caption">AVE ATQVE VALE</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="c11"><span class="less">A KEY TO THE DATES OF WORKS BY AUBREY BEARDSLEY
+ACCORDING TO THE STYLE OF HIS SIGNATURE</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p class="c">PUERILIA</p>
+
+<p class="c">Mid-1888 he comes to town</p>
+
+
+<p class="c p1">JUVENILIA</p>
+
+<p class="c">Mid-1889 to Mid-1891, blank of achievement</p>
+
+
+<p class="c p1 sp">FORMATIVE PERIOD—BURNE-JONESESQUES</p>
+
+<p class="c">Mid-1891 to Mid-1892</p>
+
+<p>During these three periods, up to Mid-1892, Beardsley signs with three
+initials A. V. B.</p>
+
+
+<p class="c p1 sp">MEDIÆVALISM AND THE HAIRY-LINE JAPANESQUES</p>
+
+<p class="c">The <i>Morte d’Arthur</i> and <i>Bon Mots</i></p>
+
+<p>Mid-1892 to Mid-1893. Begins the “Japanesque mark”—the <i>stunted</i>
+mark.</p>
+
+<p>In the Spring of 1893, with the coming of “The Studio,” and the ending
+of this period, Beardsley cuts the V out of his initials and out of his signature.
+He now signs A. B. or A. BEARDSLEY or AUBREY B. in ill-shaped
+“rustic” capitals, when he does not employ the “Japanesque mark,” even
+sometimes when he does employ it.</p>
+
+
+<p class="c p1 sp">“SALOME”</p>
+
+<p>Mid-1893 to the New Year 1894. The “Japanesque mark” becomes
+longer, more slender, and more graceful.</p>
+
+
+<p class="c p1 sp">“THE YELLOW BOOK” OR GREEK VASE PERIOD</p>
+
+<p>This ran from the New Year 1894 to Mid-1895; and in the middle of this
+<i>Yellow Book</i> period, that is, in Mid-1894, he signs the “Japanesque mark”
+for the last time.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</span></p>
+
+
+<p class="c p1 sp">THE GREAT PERIOD</p>
+
+<p>
+I. “<i>The Savoy</i>” and <span class="pad4">II. “<i>The Aquatintesques</i>”</span><br>
+Mid-1895 to Yuletide 1896                <span class="pad4">1897</span><br>
+</p>
+
+<p>From Mid-1895 Beardsley signs in plain block capitals, right up to the
+end—the only difference being that in the last phase of the <i>Aquatintesque
+line and wash</i> work with the few line drawings of this time, that is from
+Mid-1896, he signs as a rule only the initials A. B. in plain block capitals,
+but now usually <i>in a corner of his design</i>, either in or without a small square
+label.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</span></p>
+<hr class="full">
+
+
+
+<p class="c">
+“AUBREY BEARDSLEY”<br>
+HAS BEEN DESIGNED<br>
+BY ROBERT S. JOSEPHY<br>
+AND PRINTED UNDER HIS<br>
+SUPERVISION BY THE<br>
+VAIL-BALLOU PRESS<br>
+BINGHAMTON<br>
+NEW YORK
+</p>
+<hr class="full">
+
+<div class="transnote">
+
+<p class="c">Transcriber’s Notes:</p>
+
+<p>Repetative heading for - The Key to dates...- has been removed.</p>
+
+<p>Variations in spelling and hyphenation are retained.</p>
+
+<p>Perceived typographical errors have been changed.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75239 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
+
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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.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
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+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #75239 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/75239)