VI
THE JAPANESQUES
Mid-1893 to the New Year of 1894—Twenty-One
“SALOME”
Enteredinto 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 JapanesqueCaricature of Whistleron 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 theSalomefounded frankly upon the convention of the superb peacocks on the shutters painted byWhistler 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.
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It was a fortunate thing for Beardsley that Dent who had begun to publish theMorte d’Arthurin 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’sSalome, 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 ofThe Studioin 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 forSalome.
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 producingbelles lettresin 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—theMorte d’Arthurand theBon Motswere 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 theMorte 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 theSalomedrawings than in theSavoy, since theSalomedesigns are largely line unrelated to mass, there areeven so-called critics to be found who place theSalomedrawings 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 theSalomedrawings 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, theSalome, 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 theSalomeagainst 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.” InSalomehe got all that he could from the Japanese genius, an alien tongue; and inThe 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 theSalomehe 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 theSalomedesigns 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 theMorte 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 ofSalomehe had completed it with a final decoration which opened the gates to self-expression. When Beardsley closed the book ofSalomehe 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 exquisiteBurial of Salomein a powder-box in the very spirit of the eighteenth century whose child he was.
Salomefinished, however, was notSalomepublished. Elkin Mathews and John Lane realised that the drawings could not appear without certain mitigations, though, as a matter of fact, there werebut 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, theTitle Page, andEnter Herodiaswere 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 Danceappeared 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 theToilette 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 ofJohn and Salome, and in place of the two had been inserted the wretchedBlack Capeand GeorgianToilettewhich were not only utterly out of place in the book but tore the fabric of the whole design to pieces, and displayed in Beardsley astrain 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 mediocreBlack Capeand the better GeorgianToilette, 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.
danceTHE STOMACH DANCEfrom “Salome”
THE STOMACH DANCE
from “Salome”
The interpolatedBlack Capeand theSecond Toilettewe may here dismiss as having nothing to do with the case; and what is more, they are wholly outside theSalomeatmosphere. Of the pureSalomedesigns, incomparably the finest areThe Stomach Danceand thePeacock Skirt. Yet, so faulty was Beardsley’s own taste at times, that he considered the best drawings to beThe Man in the Moon, thePeacock Skirt, andThe Dancer’s Reward—it should be noted by the way that Beardsley showed by hisBook of Fifty Drawingsthat his title wasThe Man in the Moonnot as the publishers have it,The Woman in the Moon. But it is inThe Climax, one of the less noteworthy designs, that we discover Beardsley’s forward stride—for though the lowerhalf 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 inThe Studiofirst 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 asThe 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 beengiven 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 theSalomedrawings for instance have appeared in theMorte 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 theMorte d’Arthur, several are repeated—some more than once. Let us take 400 as a rough estimate, just for argument. Calculatingroughly that he made 400 drawings for theMorte 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 withSalome, he had exhausted the Japanesque formula of line. The play completed, the feverish brain has to evolve aTitle-page, aList of Contents, and aFinis; and we have seen him playing in a new key. Closing the book ofSalome, 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 hisMorte d’Arthurdesigns again, he was about to burst into a new song as hinted at by the last three designs forSalome. An artist is finding himself. Beardsley is on the threshold of a new utterance.
titleTITLE PAGE OF “SALOME”
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 Beardsleysaid: that he was to make drawings with no relation to the letterpress in a new venture about to appear. ForThe Yellow Bookis 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 theSalome, 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 asThe Keynote Seriesof novels, published on the heels of the wide success ofKeynotesby 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.
yellowCOVER DESIGN FOR “THE YELLOW BOOK” VOLUME III
COVER DESIGN FOR “THE YELLOW BOOK” VOLUME III