Part 11

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.