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 MOTSâ€
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’sLe Morte d’Arthurto 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.
hailHAIL MARY
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’sHail 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 forhis 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!â€
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 asThe 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 theMorte 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.â€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 theMorte 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.
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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 ofBon Motsby famous wits which Dent was about to publish. So it came about that Beardsley poured out his Japanesque grotesques andMorte d’Arthurmediævalisms side by side! and was not too careful as to which was the grotesque and which the mediævalism. For theBon Motshe 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 betterthan 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 theMorte d’Arthurpage 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 theMorte d’Arthur. It made him.
One has only to look at the general mediocrity of the grotesques for theBon Motsto realise what a severe self-discipline the solid black decorations of the mediævalMorte d’Arthurput upon Beardsley for the utterance of his genius. Beardsley knew full well that his whole career depended on those designs for theMorte 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’sEvelinaand, whether they have vanished or were never completed, on drawings for Hawthorne’sTalesand Mackenzie’sMan 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 havebeen forgotten and deluding memory flings amongst their drab performance masterpieces rose-leafwise from theRape of the LockandThe Savoyfor 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 theMorte d’Arthurwith 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 ofA Girlowned 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 indicatethe 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.
sketchPENCIL SKETCH OF A CHILD
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.â€
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.
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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 anotherfoot towards Morris’s house a second time, induced the young fellow to let him have a printed proof from theMorte d’ArthurofThe Lady of the Lake telling Arthur of the sword Excaliburto 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.
queenHOW QUEEN GUENEVER MADE HER A NUNfrom “Le Morte D’Arthurâ€
HOW QUEEN GUENEVER MADE HER A NUN
from “Le Morte D’Arthurâ€
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 ofhigh 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 theMorte d’Arthurwere 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 fakeâ€â€”find himself—and give to the world inThe Savoya 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.
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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’sShaving 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 linebegan 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 heavyMorte d’Arthurconvention by drawing fantasies in this Japanesque vein forBon 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.
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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 ofThe 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 betweenCharles Holme and Lewis Hind—andThe 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 ashisbest 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 forLe Morted’Arthur, theSiegfried Act II, theBirthday of Madame Cigale—Les Revenants de Musique—“SomeSalomedrawingsâ€â€”with several chapter-headings and tailpieces for theMorte d’Arthur. Hind’s memory probably tricked him as to theSalomedrawings; for, in refreshing his memory, likely as not, he looked at the first number ofThe Studiopublished three months later. Wilde’sSalomedid 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 toThe Studiooffices. 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 dailyPall Mall Gazetteand the weeklyPall Mall Budgetand was launching a new monthly to be calledThe Pall Mall Magazine. Lord Brownlow’s nephew, Harry Cust, appointed editor of thePall Mall Gazette, asked Hind to become editor of the weeklyBudgetat 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 ofThe Studioin his stead. But even as he set Gleeson White in the vacant editorial chair, Hind tookBeardsley with him also to what was to be Hind’s three years editorship of thePall Mall Budget, for which, unfortunately, the young fellow wrought little but such unmitigated trash as must have somewhat dumbfounded Hind.
So the first number ofThe Studiowas to appear in the April of 1893 glorifying a wonderful youth—his name Aubrey Beardsley!
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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 forThe Studiofrom the much gratified youth, who went home thrilled with the prospect that set his soul on fire—here wasréclame! 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 ofThe Studioafter Frank Brangwyn, then beginningto 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 mediævalMorte d’Arthurblackletter? 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 ofThe Studioin 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 ofThe Studiodid not appear until the April of1893; it was the first public recognition of Aubrey Beardsley it is true; but an utterly ridiculous legend has grown aroundThe Studiothat it made Beardsley famous. It did absolutely nothing of the kind.The Studioitself 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—whereThe Studiocaused 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 fromThe Studiooffices to edit thePall 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 theMorte d’Arthur, which howeverthe 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 forMorte d’Arthurwere made by the time that Beardsley began his miserable venture in thePall Mall Budget. The first volume ofBon Motsappeared in the April of 1893—theSydney Smith and Sheridanvolume—although few heard of or saw the little book, and none paid it respect. It was pretty poor stuff.
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Now, though theMorte d’Arthurwas in large part done beforeThe Studioeulogy 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 inThe Studioarticle. There are examples from theMorte 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 calledThe Procession of Joan of Arc entering Orleanswas 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 masterlyMorte d’Arthurdecorations. If the writers were at sea, the public can scarce be blamed. TheSiegfried Act IIof 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. TheBirthday of MadameCigaleandLes Revenants de Musiqueshow the Japanesque more asserting itself over the mock mediæval, and are akin toLe Debris d’un PoèteandLa Femme Incomprise. But there was also a Japanesque inThe Studiowhich 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 calledSalomeby 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 inThe Studiowhich 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 EnglishSalome, translated by Lord Alfred Douglas, which was soon to appear. In thatSalomewas to be a marvellous significance for Aubrey Beardsley.
It is interesting to note in surveying the first number ofThe Studio, the rapid development of Beardsley’s art from the fussy flourishy design of thisSalomedrawing 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 inThe Studiofirst 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 ofSandro Botticellimade in 1893 about the time thatTheStudiowas 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.
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By his twenty-first birthday, then, Beardsley had practically done with theMorte 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’ssaid, 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 theMorte d’Arthurin 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 theMorte d’Arthuralmost 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 theMorte d’Arthurwas 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 thePall Mall Magazinefor June 1893, drawn in April 1893, as the firstStudionumber was appearing, a design known asThe Neophyte, or to give its full affected name, “Of a Neophyte, and how the Black Art was revealed unto him by the Fiend Asomuelâ€; it was followed in the July number by a drawing of May 1893 calledThe Kiss of Judas—both drawings reveal an unmistakable change in handling, and theNeophytea 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 theMorte d’Arthurand kindred works in his “hairy lineâ€; 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 throughit—it was not lost on Beardsley’s quick mind, especially its grotesque possibilities.
revealed“OF A NEOPHYTE AND HOW THE BLACK ART WAS REVEALEDUNTO HIMâ€
“OF A NEOPHYTE AND HOW THE BLACK ART WAS REVEALEDUNTO HIMâ€
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 asThe 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’sMorte d’Arthurphase 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†calledThe Questing Beastis dated by Beardsley himself “March 8, 1893â€â€”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 theMorte d’Arthurbegan to be given to the public, Beardsley, as we have seen, had completely rejected his whole Burne-Jones convention.
The two cover-designs forThe Studio No. Iin April 1893 were obviously drawn at the same time as the design for the covers of theMorte d’Arthur—in the early Spring of 1893. They could well be exchanged without the least loss. They practically write Finis to theMorte d’Arthurdrawings. 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 theMorte d’Arthuron 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 salaryWho had to do drawings for Malory;When they asked him for more, he replied “Why? SureYou’ve enough, as it is, for a gallery.â€
There was a young man with a salaryWho had to do drawings for Malory;When they asked him for more, he replied “Why? SureYou’ve enough, as it is, for a gallery.â€
There was a young man with a salaryWho had to do drawings for Malory;When they asked him for more, he replied “Why? SureYou’ve enough, as it is, for a gallery.â€
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.â€
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 andpaper 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 fromThe 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 whetherMorte d’Arthurmediævalism or the Japanesque grotesques of hisBon 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 hisSalomedesigns, as weary of theBon Motsgrotesques as of theMorte d’Arthurmediævalism; 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!
sign
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. TheBon Motsgrotesques, 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. TheMorte d’Arthurbegan to be published in parts in June 1893. The feverish creation of the mediæval designs in the late part of 1892 alongside of theBon Motsgrotesques had exhausted Beardsley’s enthusiasm, and his style evaporated with the growth of his weariness—by mid-1893 he was finding theMorte 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 itisa 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 theMorte d’Arthur, by that time he came near to the endof 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 inSalomewe shall see him again advancing so rapidly to a newer development of his style that he grew weary of theSalomebefore 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 thisSalome, 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 toSalome, and he found he could not go back. This will be clearer when we come to theSalome.
So precisely with theMorte d’Arthur; even the last decorations he made were more akin to his Greek Vase style inThe Yellow Book.
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Before we leave theMorte 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 noStudio“réclame,†noYellow Book, noSalome, noSavoy. Dent, employing with rare vision the budding genius of the youth, brought forth an edition of Sir Thomas Malory’s immortalMorte d’Arthurwhich is a triumph for English bookmaking—he gave us the supreme editionthat 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.